Bay 12 Games Forum

Bringing a dwarf with Noble skills nolonger guarantees that he will be the expedition leader. The details of this discovery were posted in the linked forup thread "Bug or Feature"

Some tree-loving spiritual cultures only use naturally fallen wood. Branches, trees that died naturally, and gifts from sentient trees.

In some fantasy settings, Elves control nature by superior magic; rather than living in harmony with nature, they change nature to live in harmony with them. They make trees grow into building-shapes and force wild animals to do their bidding.

The room dynamics are really interesting, and they're working right now, but it seems like things would work better if Rooms and Activity Areas were merged.

They both operate under a similar principle; use this area for this activity. This area belongs to this dwarf, these dwarves can use this area, and so on. I think it would be better than the current system of assigning rooms based on items. Rooms already include additional items that are in their 'floorspace', so why not a room that has no origin object? An area that just uses what objects are at hand. A bedroom could be designated without a bed, and the dwarf would sleep on the floor if no bed was placed.

The other part of this I'd like to suggest is the concept of super-areas. These would be areas made up of several sub-areas. Like a dwelling is made up of a bedroom, and possibly a dining room, an office, and a den. Dwarves could own/rent dwellings they way they own/rent bedrooms currently, and they would thus own every room attached to the dwelling. This could also be used for attaching stockpiles to workshops, cells to prisons, and possibly other things in the future.

Ever since I found out about the Forbid Tool I've found it really handy. I can stop my dwarves from gathering the stone left over in the mines, where I don't plan on building anything anyway. I think a converse tool would be really helpful though; a Prefer tool.

You could set Prefer on objects in a room, and your haulers would choose to put them into stockpiles before putting other objects into stockpiles, and your crafters would prefer to use those materials over other materials. If you set all your microcline to 'prefer' then all the stone goods would be crafted out of microcline untill the prefered stone was used up.

I'm sure you all can think of other ways this would be incredibly useful.

Yeah there are different levels of simulation you could use for the magical flows. You could do constant tile-by-tile tracking, though that would be very intensive on your processor, you could pre-determine the magical flows and leave them constant or only change them once a year or something depending on terrain. I could come up with other ways too. When it comes to implementation, that's up to the Bay12 guys to decide.

Also I kinda figured that a lack of magic wouldn't be a big concern. At the lowest rate of mana intake, you'd still be able to use magic for your adventuring. It's just that you would want to use high-magic places for resource-gathering or treasure-locations.

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Core15, MAGIC, (Future): There are no specific decisions nailed down yet, although we've thought about it a lot. It's probably best to go for a very general system here, as in the first Armok attempt. Then the world generator and entities can decide what they want to use from what's available. Early efforts might be to make dwarven artifacts more interesting and to increase the power and variability of enemy leaders, rather than focusing on traditional spell-casting adventurers.  

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I see that the eventual magic system hasn't been fleshed out yet. I'd love to make some design suggestions regarding that. One of my dream video games would be very much like Dwarf Fortress, but I'd be playing the role of a wizard with a dungeon full of monsters, researching magic and keeping nosy adventurers and thieves out of my tower/dungeon complex. ^.^

The first thing I'd like to suggest in regards to a magic system would be a global 'magical weather' system. Since you're already tracking temperature, weather, and climate, why not track the flows of magical energy through the world?

One common belief regarding magic, both irl and in fantasy, is that magical energy flows through the world in different amounts in different places. In some places it's like a breeze, in others like a river, in others like a tornado. So my suggestion here would be to track magical flows the way you track pressure systems and weather. When it comes to magical climate I've got a couple ideas. One idea would be to make the magical flows react to the Good and Evil areas, so that perhaps magic would carry a sort of 'charge' where it goes from a good area to an evil area, then looks for another good area. Another idea I have is to base magical flows on the geological strata. Materials like gold would cause magical flows to increase, while materials like iron-bearing rock would slow them. Deaths might cause a sudden 'burst' of magic into the environment, which is why some evil wizards and priests sacrifice victims. Likewise a battlefield might end up being a rich source of magical power.

What all this would do is make magic into another resource. You would want a fortress with a lot of magic in order to make magic artifacts, the way you would want a fortress with other terrain features.

The other thing it could do is create magical effects in areas where the power pools together. This could do things like raising undead armies or opening portals for demons to enter the world, and maybe even create magical biomes like a forest of sentient trees or a mountain-face that is alive and can talk to visitors.

Wizard NPCs would build towers at points of major magical importance, someplace where the magic is either moving really fast or pooling like a lake. The more magic is there the more powerful of magic items you can make, and likewise the more power a wizard has. Temples and healing shrines would also be built in locations with a lot of magic, because the priests and healers would use the magical powers to heal the sick and injured.

From an adventurer point of view, you would have a pool of magical energy you could store in your body, and expend some of it to manifest a magical spell like a fireball, magical flying, or healing magic. The more magic in the area, the faster you can replenish that pool. You'd likely have a base amount of regeneration at all times, and be able to dramatically increase it by meditating to gather ambient magic. If you visit someplace with enough magical power, you might be able to do something special, like fill your magical reserves beyond their normal maximum, or cast a spell that requires more magical power than you personally have, by drawing on local energy. Opening a portal to another dimension for example, might only be possible in a place where there is a lot of ambient magic, because nobody individually has a large enough pool of mana to do that. If every creature has a pool of mana, that pool might be what is released when the creature dies.

Another idea for spells would be to have some magical effects create a sort of 'creature' which feeds on magic; it will go about the area enacting the 'effect' as long as there is magic for it to 'eat'; as such if a wizard casts a spell recklessly, it might have a stronger effect than he can control. If he tries to raise undead, and the raise undead spell has plenty of energy to eat, it might make more undead than the would-be necromancer can control, causing them to eat him and go on a rampage. In an extreme example, it might be possible that the undead kill people, releasing their mana, which the spell eats to make more undead out of the dead people, entering a zombie apocalypse scenario. When this happens, the NPC civilizations might band together to form a great army and try to stop the end of the world.

Anyways these are just some ideas I'm having. What do you think?

Yeah I figured most of my suggestions would be repeats. Great minds think alike, they say, and a good idea isn't usually an original one. ^.^;;

And yeah, I could just make another world and adventure in that, but I really wanna see the engravings that my legendary engraver made regarding the Day of the Bone Carver and the Canine Warrior Locunducim.

In regards to trombone's comment and the response...

Yeah when you go to place a workshop or other building, the brightness of the Xs tells you if it'll be passable or not, but it would be great if you could see the floorplans of buildings before you make them, so you don't build a room too small for your workshop and then find out 'oh no, the door is right where the machine goes!' or something.

Currently you can only see the floorplan when you're placing it, and you can't even try to place it if you don't have all the parts.