Bay 12 Games Forum

Thanks for the answers!

Quote from: Toady One on April 04, 2023, 07:47:25 pm

We're currently giving some attention to aboveground plants which are much more visible in adventure mode (but this will also impact aboveground fort farms of course.)

Any specific plans for this already? Like, will the whole plants and not just growths be gatherable, will seasons come into play and will it be changed how much you can gather from one plant tile (since now you can just pick vast amounts)? And/or will there be new uses for plants?

My impression is that the answer refers to graphics rather than functionality. A farming overhaul is probably way too much work to fit into something else (in this case Adventure Mode adaptation to new UI and graphics, with some minor general improvements/additions). I assume Toady will answer the question in a month, though.

Actually, thinking a bit and trying to do a quick check, I think the genes only exist in the unit info, in which case gene inheritance would only apply to units (relations are stored in the historical figure data), with some uncertainty to what happens when a historical figure becomes a unit (possibly newly born) when at least one of the parents has unit data, but that information is offloaded (such as for the case where a child is born by a visitor (a unit) and the father has visited at some earlier point in time (and thus has unit information that's probably offloaded)).
Well, that's not really what you asked anyway...

If the creature raws still define a character for things it would make sense to fall back to an image of that character (basically the tile set image used by the Classic version) if the currently selected tile set (which might not be an official one) doesn't contain the character. I also have third party tool usage of character images in mind (where character tiles from the character tile set would be addressed directly).

While having the debug creature wear a T-shirt with a character on it would be cool for creatures, I suspect the available number of pixels won't be sufficient to actually depict legible characters in many cases.

How does trap finding by enemies work? I know diplomats and spies can find them, but I'm not sure on the specifics, and the wiki doesn't have anything on it. May I get some in depth explanation?

When anyone from a civilization passes over a trap the trap location becomes known to that individual and the information is immediately passed on to the civilization the moment that individual leaves the fortress map. Notably, this includes members of performance troupes, who are usually members both of the troupe and a civilization, and troupe membership seems to trump civilization membership when it comes to enemy identification (until fighting breaks out), so members of the goblin civ you're at war with can come and go as part of performance troupes without any problem. I've never been able to identify an actual spy (not to be confused with villain agents, which come in never ending streams even as legitimate visitors die of old age), despite having looked quite intensively for them. Either they're quite rare, or they're too cunning for me to detect (using DFHack scripts).

Once a trap is known by a civ, its invaders can pass over the trap without incident. If the detection was made by a spying civilian, the invaders just pass over the trap when invading, and if it was detected during an invasion its location is known during the next invasion. Dismantling and reconstruction of a trap wipes the knowledge of the trap from the knowledge base of civs.
As far as I know, necro towers aren't civs from this perspective, and don't gain knowledge of trap locations, but that doesn't mean they might not eventually.

Hello! Before I'll ask my questions, I've wanted to congratulate you on the release, I've been playing DF since 2013-ish and I'm so happy that the launch of the game went so well. Thank you a hundredfold for all the hard work that you've put into the project over the years

I've got a mishmash of different questions:

1. Will relationships/marriages between different races ever be added into the game (i.e. human-elf, dwarf-elf, elf-dwarf, human-dwarf)?
1b. If yes, in-line with common fantasy tropes, would you consider ever adding half-elves, half-dwarves etc. as offspring of such marriages?
2. I remember seeing transgender/non-binary pops being mentioned a few years back somewhere as something that was planned. Is this still somewhere in the development pipeline perchance? I would absolutely love to see this included at some point
3. Is there a chance that (perhaps as part of the map rewrite update) eventually the map will be an actual projection of a planet instead of a rectangle suspended in space? I imagine that once boats become a thing then being able to circumnavigate the globe would be a nice feature.
4. Will there ever be a more complex diplomacy and interactions system with other sites/civs? Anything to make the messenger useful for anything more than requesting workers?
5. Lastly, the Steam edition of the soundtrack currently is just compromised of 176 kbps MP3s, whereas the Bandcamp release has much higher quality files available. Is there a chance that FLAC tracks will be included in the Steam version at any point?

1b: Yes. This is part of the centaur problem, i.e. finding out how to create hybrid of different races species. The easier version is to come up with a way to create offspring based on creatures with the same body plan (such as e.g. human/dwarf/elf/goblin/kobold) and same general properties (human/dwarf, but elf falls that part on immortality, goblin on immortality+no-eat, kobold on egg laying, with animal people obviously falling on their animal parts), and onto biologically "impossible" mashes such as centaurs, cerberii, etc. that might still be possible magically.
These problems are hard, but probably not perceived as impossible, and so are intended to be tacked eventually (which is well within the "ever" time frame). The result will probably not be as "primitive" as half-elves, but rather some kind of simulation of genetics that allows for offspring to inherit varying traits from their parents (such as a stocky daughter with a rounded skull and but prominent brow ridges and a slim son with an elongated skull and limited brow ridges from from the same neanderthal and sapiens parents), and, as a result of that, offspring that may inherit traits from a more varied ancestry (human/dwarf/elf/kobold with differing proportions of each, for instance, where the "proportions" would really be in the form of "genes").
2. Currently cross dressing is rendered impossible by the fact that clothes aren't gendered and there aren't any other gender specific customs either, and I don't think the state surgery is in (based on the general reference timeline of 1400) would result in many individual want to try that route (I don't think the gelders would get many "unusual" requests from willing customers). Homosexual leanings already exist, and is currently the limit of what can be displayed.
3. No. This has been asked before, and the answer is that there is no reasonably way to make a rectangular grid out of a sphere. A cylinder (were moving off one side causes you to end up on the other) would be possible, as would the arcade variant where moving off to one side causes you to end up at the other side as well as moving off the top causes you to end up at the bottom. The latter is topologically identical to a torus, but it's not a possible shape if you bring in reality and demand that each tile should be a square of the same size. Of course, the "torus" might eventually be possible in a weird magical realm that's not supposed to make full real world sense, should Toady elect to create such a realm.
4. Embark scenarios will require some additional justifications/purposes to the various scenarios, which would most likely require them to have different relationship options. A penal colony would have different options from a set of refugees from a conquered realm setting out to reestablish the realm on a new continent.

I don't know.

I will start to investigate DFHack related things once DFHack supports the Classic version (or the Itch.io version once DF has restored keyboard support).
Since the script only uses "normal" UI functionality (as opposed to trying to create overlays) it ought to be reasonably straightforward to update it, assuming the DFHack mapping of data has been updated.

Edit:
DFHack now supports Classic, and after fixing an interface profile change, I'm now stuck on DF itself currently no longer supporting any Help key binding (to which the help screen is bound). It ought to be restored when keyboard support is restored, at which point it would be useful to continue.

The answer is essentially the same as the corresponding one for the Biome Manipulator:

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=164658.msg8449368#msg8449368