Bay 12 Games Forum
Dwarf Fortress => DF Suggestions => Topic started by: praguepride on March 11, 2010, 10:55:31 am
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Add a [SADISTIC] tag to monsters that does certain "sadistic" things. Examples include
- toying around with injured dwarves. So imagine a dwarf is fighting a troll and the troll mauls the dwarf and the dwarf passes out. Instead of just going in and kill the dwarf, the troll might pause, waiting for the dwarf to recover before attacking again. The dwarf would probably again quickly pass out and this would repeat, effectively having the troll torture it's victims.
- playing with morbid objects. The creature will pick up bodies, chunks, bones and skulls and randomly throw them around. They might then go over, pick it up again and throw it around some more.
- use morbid objects as weapons. Imagine a creature that decapitates a dwarf, picks up the dwarves head and then throws it at another dwarf, stunning it long enough for it to rush in and decapitate. This would use logic simliar to throwing stuff in adventure mode, but obviously would neded to be nerfed heavily so that a dwarven chunk doesn't blast right through plate mail. This would also provide an opportunity for non-ranged combatants to gain temporary ranged weapons. Damage for chunks etc. should be minimal, but it should have a high chance of stunning (you'd be stunned if some creature just threw the head of your squad mate square in your face!).
- gather morbid objects. Basically a sadistic troll might go around and gather skulls and bones to "decorate" it's cave with.
Perhaps with the [SADISTIC] tag there should be a [MORBID] tag to indicate that an item is "unpleasant". How does HFS know to spawn chunks and blood and gore etc.?
Basically, the "toying" around stuff wouldn't really do anything for the creature (except train it's "thrwoing" skill...) but it would do this randomly instead of walking around or attacking nearby dwarves. Perhaps if it doesn't have a toy to play with and occupy it's attention, it has an increased likelihood of attacking your dwarves. Thus a "sacrifice" situation might happen where to keep the huge group of ogres away from your fledgling fort, one unlucky dwarf is chosen to be their "plaything" for awhile...
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Should not a sadism level be a function of personality traits (http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/40d:Personality_trait)?
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Perhaps, perhaps not. The funadmental question that would be asked is could a normal dwarf do terriible atrocities?
Do you want your dwarves toying with enemies and chucking chunks at each other as the norm, or as a mod?
I'd say that this could be associated with the [EVIL] tag. Technically Evil/Good should be part of the personality as well, as you could have good & evil dwarves. However, for game mechanic purposes, [EVIL] represents so much more then just being bad. The same could be sad about the sadism tag. It would represent and use certain behavior patterns that other creatures would never do. So this way if animals ever get personalities you don't have to worry about horses throwing your dwarf corpses around.
So certain evil creatures wouldn't have this. I'd say goblins & kobolds would not be sadistic. Yeah, they're evil, but not sadistic. (this is a judgement call though, there's no real right or wrong answer). However, in the powergoals, it specifically mentions trolls playing around with skulls & captives, or demons might easily get this as they go aroudn raping your dwarves with tentacles...
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If I'm not mistaken, each species has its maximum and minimum values for personality traits. So while dwarfs would only have something like "he finds pain and blood attractive" (increasing the chance of fell mood). And a troll (or dwarfs in modded game) would have "he is a psychopathic sadistic maniac".
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Then why is [GOOD]/[EVIL] a tag? Why is [BENIGN] a tag? It's more then just personality traits, it's programmed defined behaviors.
Perhaps one day all that will be reduced to the personality so you'll have evil dwarves volunteering under demon armies, but until then, I'd say that pulling out sadism into a tag on it's own is a far better system to deal with the specialized behaviors.
Plus, I'd like sadism to actually DO stuff as opposed to just exist like it does with personalities. Other then governing a few happy/bad thoughts and likelihood of using social skills, personality traits do not define behavior.
Sadism would define behavior. Thus it needs a tag.
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The tags you listed have to do with biomes for the most part. You don't expect a fluffy wambler to decide whether it should live in a terrifying forest or not, do you?
I see no reason why a tag would be preferable to a proper personality trait, which allows varying behavior among creatures of the same race, and is more elegant overall.
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Then why is [GOOD]/[EVIL] a tag? Why is [BENIGN] a tag? It's more then just personality traits, it's programmed defined behaviors.
They're placeholder tags, just like good/evil regions are placeholders (and soon to be removed (http://bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_next.html)).
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Are you saying that BONECARN should be a personality trait? That INTELLIGENT or CAN_CIV should be personality traits?
No, because those tags define BEHAVIORS. Personality traits do next to nothing at the moment. They trigger an occasional good/bad thought or allow a a dwarf to train "persuader" or other social skills and that is the extent of that.
The [SADISTIC] tag would define actual, programmed behaviors. Building skull thrones, tossing enemy corpses around, using body parts as impromptu weapons.
Those are behaviors, not personality traits. Again, in an "ideal" game yeah all those things could be controlled by personality traits. You can have an "inteligence" level that determines the civilization capability of a species, so higher intelligent critters build more cities. You could have a Immunity: FIRE scale that determines how protected they are from fire (completely, a lot, a little, none). You could have "Lock picking" attribute or a "Trap avoidance' attribute that determines the quality level of doors/traps that a creature could pick.
But a system like that is what, 5 years away? 10 years? WHo knows?
Right now, we have tags that define behaviors:
BONECARN
LOCKPICKER
MISCHEVIOUS
TRANCE
TRAPAVOID
VERMINHUNTER
etc. etc.
These tags define behaviors. The game is currently set up to read tags, not behaviors. Plus, what would happen if you wanted to put the sadistic tag on a creature without a personality? Say a demon spawn that is a fairly mindless killing machine. And last time I checked, only civs have personalities.
Trolls, which this tag is specificaly designed for because of the PowerGoal mention, do not have personalities. So until personalities are useful enough that creatures like Trolls, Ogres, and other non-civving baddies have them, this tag should not be a personality trait.
NOW, you could have a seperate sadism personality trait that would generate good/bad thoughts from inflicting violence, but that would be a HUGE difference from a creature that prefers to make a bed out of the crushed bodies of it's victims.
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So to clarify, you are suggesting that while personality traits lead to generic torture and satisfaction, [SADISTIC] leads to specific behaviors, that may even be independent of satisfaction?
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So to clarify, you are suggesting that while personality traits lead to generic torture and satisfaction, [SADISTIC] leads to specific behaviors, that may even be independent of satisfaction?
Yes. The creatures this is intended for do not have intelligence, personalities, or morale, so things like "good thoughts/bad thoughts" or "interests" or "personality" doesn't really apply to them in the current build.
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Yes. The creatures this is intended for do not have intelligence, personalities, or morale, so things like "good thoughts/bad thoughts" or "interests" or "personality" doesn't really apply to them in the current build.
The creatures that you mentioned as examples, trolls and ogres, both have CAN_LEARN, so they are at least semi-intelligent.
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Yes. The creatures this is intended for do not have intelligence, personalities, or morale, so things like "good thoughts/bad thoughts" or "interests" or "personality" doesn't really apply to them in the current build.
The creatures that you mentioned as examples, trolls and ogres, both have CAN_LEARN, so they are at least semi-intelligent.
But they don't have personalities. Nor do personalities do anything.
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Yes, but the plan is to make them do things. Putting all this behavior into a tag wouldn't make sense now that the personality system is in place. It would be backtracking - like adding a button you had to click in order to fix a bug. There's no reason for it. Your suggestion fits with the personality system well, and these are behaviors a sadistic creature should have. There are certain cases where a dwarf/human/etc. should degenerate to possibly do these things (corrupted by dark forces, witnessed his entire family brutally murdered and butchered, etc), and that should be handled by a range of sadism levels, not an unalterable static race-level tag.
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And when are tags being brought out into personality traits? I don't think we're doing away with all personality traits in this upcoming release. So what, something like this should wait 5 years until personality traits actually do something?
It would not be a difficult process to convert this over to personality traits anyway, and it has to be done with other tags as well so it's hardly a huge step backward. It's like 1/2 step back and 3 steps forward :D
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So what, something like this should wait 5 years until personality traits actually do something?
Wider use of personality traits is certainly going to happen sooner than this suggestion (it's a gradual process, the next version already has more personality stuff, etc), so yeah, that seems reasonable. You seem to think that this has a greater chance of being implemented quickly if it's simplified, but that's not the case. Toady's generally not eager to spend time on placeholders.
Anyway, even if personality (especially the Sympathy trait, maybe Anger too) and ethics influence such behavior, it might also be useful to have a tag like MATERIAL_CLASS_VALUE_MULTIPLIER so that various creatures can be more attracted to certain types of materials.
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But they don't have personalities. Nor do personalities do anything.
Incorrect and incorrect. As far as I know, lack of personality tags on a creature with CAN_LEARN just makes the creature have a completely random personality. This can lead to all sorts of things, especially if the creature's in a position of power (see Footkerchief's post above).
In addition to affecting things such as when and where wars are begun, personality tags also have some minor effects on creature behaviour - from my experience angry creature berserk more quickly in combat, and stress-susceptible civ members get unhappy faster.
But this is hardly relevant. Most of what I would've said is said above.
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But they don't have personalities. Nor do personalities do anything.
Incorrect and incorrect. As far as I know, lack of personality tags on a creature with CAN_LEARN just makes the creature have a completely random personality. This can lead to all sorts of things, especially if the creature's in a position of power (see Footkerchief's post above).
In addition to affecting things such as when and where wars are begun, personality tags also have some minor effects on creature behaviour - from my experience angry creature berserk more quickly in combat, and stress-susceptible civ members get unhappy faster.
But this is hardly relevant. Most of what I would've said is said above.
This is all I could find about personalities on the wiki.
Note: Races without the tags for a certain field have a full range of values, presumably with an average value of 50.
In my observations, personality effects good/bad thought generation. So sure, an angry/depressed person might be more prone to tantrums due to lower morale, but again I repeat that the impact of personalities are not reflected in this tag.
For example, this tag would operate very similarly to the [CURIOUS] tag, that causes creatuers to randomly seek out and flip levers. Only instead of levers, they would seek out corpses to chuck around.
Again, I repeat that personaliy traits will eventually impact all this stuff, but until then, tags are the way to go. Because tags define behaviors directly.
Let me try an arguement from a different angle: Personalities are spectrums. My proposal is an ON/OFF switch.
There is no "moderate" sadism, although it COULD be suggested that there be different degrees of sadism, but what's the cut off? WHat point would they start playing "dress up" with the skins of their victims? And do you want random animals to suddenly become sadistic (due to random trait generation)? Because I'd think this should be something that only the evilist of evil baddies should have.
So, to fit this in properly where you don't have random creatures being sadistic basterds, you'd either have to
(a) - go in and set min/max sadism levels for every creature
(b) - set it as an on/off tag. This is what I'm proposing as the alternative would be a ridiculous amount of work.
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Yes, but the plan is to make them do things. Putting all this behavior into a tag wouldn't make sense now that the personality system is in place. It would be backtracking - like adding a button you had to click in order to fix a bug. There's no reason for it. Your suggestion fits with the personality system well, and these are behaviors a sadistic creature should have. There are certain cases where a dwarf/human/etc. should degenerate to possibly do these things (corrupted by dark forces, witnessed his entire family brutally murdered and butchered, etc), and that should be handled by a range of sadism levels, not an unalterable static race-level tag.
^
Pretty much this.
Really, there's lot of sugestions that consist of adding in temporary new features because the actual planned features won't be handled for some time. While thats all fine and dandy, the personality system is being expanded right now, no reason to add a placeholder for something Toady currently working on.
Personalities actualy do work as of now, but they don't do anything awesomely noticeable now. The most they do is alter the way your dwarf gains/loses stress on a certain activity (I think).
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The thing is that random creatures entirely should have the capability of being sadistic - just like they have the capability of being anything else. The random nature of personality tags exists for this precise reason. There are a few other things to keep in mind, as well. For instance, the following:
We've got procedural cultures coming soon. What this will mean is that dwarf civs won't necessarily have the same laws and ethics as they do now - when modding, for instance, a user can specify all the ethics they want to keep at a static value, and the game'll procedurally figure out the unspecified ones based on the situations the civ encounters, the traits of its leaders, etc., etc..
By suggesting that sadism should be an "on/off switch", as you put it, you're completely removing an entire facet of that procedural generation. In addition, if you're so worried about how complex the integration of sadism as a personality component would be (I'm sure you know this is not a good community wherein to argue against overse complexity), consider the implications of it not being a personality component in a fully procedural environment - using the procedural culture example above, there'll have to be a check specifically for whether the civ is sadistic or not and measures in place to stop inappropriate ethics and laws from forming, and so on. Why not just put it under the existing model? Your only counterpoint being...
So what, something like this should wait 5 years until personality traits actually do something?
Or something along those lines. And yes, it should. Mind you, currently, the only thing barely resembling sadism is the ABUSE_BODIES tag, which should be mainly redundant in the next version, due to the aforementioned procedural civs.
There is no "moderate" sadism, although it COULD be suggested that there be different degrees of sadism, but what's the cut off?
Easy enough in theory. Take an existing personality facet:
91 - 100 Is constantly active and energetic.
76 - 90 Is very energetic and active.
61 - 75 Is very active.
60 - 40 n/a
25 - 39 Is relaxed.
10 - 24 Lives life at a leisurely pace.
0 - 9 Can't be bothered with frantic, fast-paced living.
91 - 100 Is obsessed with physically and mentally abusing others.
76 - 90 Is rather amused by the suffering of others.
61 - 75 Is somewhat harsh on its/his/her enemies.
60 - 40 n/a
25 - 39 Is uneasy around cruelty.
10 - 24 Is highly disturbed by the abuse of others.
0 - 9 Is absolutely disgusted by and intolerant of the abuse of others.
It... sorta works.
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The other thing, of course, is that 'sadism' might have different interpretations in different cultures. Perhaps dressing up in the skins of their victim is perfectly normal ritual practice for trolls and they don't consider it particularly sadistic. However, the rare individuals who enjoy taking the skins off the victims while the victims are still alive...
Actually, I see [SADISM] as a culture tag rather than a behavior tag, the same way our ethics system now is a cultural ethics rather than an individual ethics.
I imagine a robust ethics system would procedurally generate a set of normal cultural behaviors for a civilization, and create a unique continuum of moral and immoral acts, and then personality traits would determine whether or not individuals were normal (causing them to prefer normal activities), depraved (causing them to prefer immoral activities), and perverse (causing them to prefer normal activities except for a few immoral ones).
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The current personality implementation almost fits those requirements already. There's nothing there that suggests that the "triggers" for personality traits need be absolute.
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Ok, let's take a break from the tag vs. personality trait.
Other then chucking bodies around, what else could be done by the AI that would be considered "sadistic"
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Skulls are not morbid objects; they are leftovers. Decorating your troll cave with chicken bones would get stupid, fast. Chucking around the chipmunk chunks you found in that log you squeezed out in that corner is not morbid, it's playful and a little bit disgusting. Point is, in order for bones to be morbid, they need to belong to something you cared about and for a quasi-intelligent predator the bones of it's prey would not be such.
Anything smart enough to realize the significance of a child's arm to a sentient creature would not just throw bones about randomly like some chromosomally challenged child. The ones that would do that are not teh evulz, they're just.. easily amused. They might as well be throwing around a pine cone. Sadism by it's very nature requires intelligence to the point that you realize that you are causing pain to another creature, often by abstract means. Other types of playful, enjoyment seeking behaviors typically just involve something vaguely stimulating such as a cat that torments a bad tasting shrew until it dies. That kitty cat might be an asshole but since it's not smart enough to realize that, it can't be sadistic in any meaningful way. Creatures playing with objects or their prey needs to be kept separate from sadism even if we can easily confuse the two. Creatures with actual sadistic tendencies would likely have objectives beyond just being assholes and would not be stupid enough to stick around to yank the dicks of their unconscious victims. Recreational torture should not come in the way of their other, real objectives, otherwise you'll be seeing half the invading goblin army get distracted pulling the nails off some woodcutter and throwing them at some sap who was outside picking berries. While psychological warfare has it's place, sadism has little to do with it and throwing around heads is not realistic combat behavior for anything smart enough to enjoy the lamentations of the enemy's women.
Not sure what I would do about the tag issue. It's a fairly crude measure, giving it little sophistication but on the other hand, if you tie it to the empathy personality trait, any species with sadistic tendencies towards it's enemies would invariably also like to pick on it's own kind, making any existence of society dubious. If you tie it to culture, you can't apply it to creatures that do not form civilizations beyond small packs. Something has to give here.
Does anything just throw objects around for the fun of it? That's just aimless and silly.
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Does anything just throw objects around for the fun of it? That's just aimless and silly.
I'm not aimless or silly! Throwing stuff is fun and quite artistic. A throw is a moment in time that won't come back. Chuck a half full soda can across the sky and watch it fall. Watch it spin. Watch it spew the soda into the air ... that moment, those movements will never come back. It's a once-in-a-lifetime thing you're watching.
Sure you can chuck -another- soda can but it won't be the same throw, the same fall. The same experience. It's just going to be a -copy- that can't possibly be 100% accurate. You need to appreciate the throw for itself, not for the throw that came before it. It's a great way to enjoy the "little things" as well as the "here and now" if you can stand being a bit childish.
... :D
oh! on the topic of sadism. I watched an old swedish movie for class some years ago. In it a guy said "The greatest pleasure that can be achieved is to betray those close to you." .. and I'm not sure what that counts as. Sadistic? Sure. But since you -care- for those you hurt it's also masochistic in a way. A pervertion of sorts.
Can you really have sadism without including masochism?
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Masochism would explain why the goblins are so eager to trigger that 10 whip weapon trap which they just saw tear their buddies apart.
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The thing about skulls is a kind of seperate issue. I thought adding a [MORBID] tag to them could make certain behaviors more appropriate. Undead might cluster around [MORBID] items (i.e. items that have to do with death: corpses, bones, chunks, and limbs).
This would help identify that trolls would be more fearsome by creating stacks of skulls as opposed to stacks of stones or berries. It is not directly intregal to the [SADISTIC] tag I proposed but the two can interact with each other (i.e. [SADISTIC] tagged creatures would be more attracted to [MORBID] items.
mor·bid
–adjective
1.suggesting an unhealthy mental state or attitude; unwholesomely gloomy, sensitive, extreme, etc.: a morbid interest in death.
2.affected by, caused by, causing, or characteristic of disease.
3.pertaining to diseased parts: morbid anatomy.
4.gruesome; grisly.
These are the parts of the actual definition of morbid that I got the term from. Now, this is not morbid to the Troll (or whatever animal), this is morbid as it concerns to the player.
"Oh look, that troll slaughtered my migrants and then built a fort out of it. How morbid/sadistic!"
So you're right, the creature might just like fresh corpses because it likes the smell of blood. IT isn't morbid as it concerns to itself, but from a player's perspective that would definitely be a grisly animal, one that likes to nest in the bodies of the creatures it kills. So, it would get the [SADISM] tag that attracts it to [MORBID] acts.
You COULD get all philisophical and say that it's not being sadistic/morbid because it's just acting to it's nature, but then why give the [EVIL] tag to demons? They can't help it that they just love to tear faces off and rape people's souls, they were just born that way ;)