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Topics - Mr Crabman

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DF Suggestions / Objects without graphics should use pseudo-ASCII (to be easier to tell apart)

« on: December 09, 2022, 02:18:48 pm »

The default debug creature (and default sprites like cauldrons for tools) have a very big downside; when there are multiple different things, they all look the same and you have to hover to have a hope of knowing what it is.

I suggest instead, to add a bunch of 32x32 sprites that LOOK roughly like big ASCII letters/symbols. Objects/creatures without graphics will use the matching symbol corresponding to their coded tile (the same one they would use in Classic), and it will be colored in using the colors that Classic would use.

DF Suggestions / Doors and hatches shouldn't visibly open if used by sneaking enemies/ambushers

« on: December 05, 2022, 08:07:48 am »

Apparently ambushers (invisible until caught by your citizens) can be sort of detected if you see doors opening and closing "by themselves".

I suggest that this trick be fixed; if a door or hatch or whatever is being opened by enemies your fort isn't aware of/can't see, the opening animation shouldn't play.

DF Suggestions / Possible simple pre-myth HFS tweaks

« on: December 02, 2022, 12:43:40 pm »

Demons could be made a bit more varied. Mythgen will do that, but some smaller, hopefully easier changes could be made sooner, assuming they don't contradict whatever lore they secretly have:

1. It's a bit weird flavor-wise that all demons are basically the same size of physically massive (twice the volume of elephants), so it would be good to make some of them smaller. Each demon species or unique demon could have a random size between say, 170,000 (50% bulkier than the largest possible humans) and their current max size. Possibly have 60% of demons/species randomly constrained to a range of 170,000 to 3,000,000, since it's more flavorful for the majority of enemies to be smaller than a few "big guys".

2. To prevent that making them more easily killed than now, use GENERAL_MATERIAL_FORCE_MULTIPLIER to make them more durable. I'm not sure what would be a good number; maybe [GENERAL_MATERIAL_FORCE_MULTIPLIER:1:4] (so attacks only have 25% as much force), and potentially higher for unique demons. This would have the bonus of making the ones that are still big (or made of metal) even more fun. Perhaps adamantine and divine metals can be exempt from this durability thing.

3. Give some of the intelligent species (or unique individuals) some magic powers, like what intelligent undead can do.

4. Give all demons some kind of special syndrome effect that is inflicted on all non-demons around them (also excluding angels probably); a mental syndrome specifically, associated with their spheres. This may be something like a temporary personality change, or exuding out a specific negative emotion, like despair, fear, grief etc. Unique demons may have a power to inflict far more long-term (even possibly permanent) versions of these syndromes.

Some forgotten beasts could make use of these changes too (Except for the potential to be much smaller; their size seems integral to their identity, unlike demons), just not always (so essentially, demons would be doubling-up on "forgotten beast traits" often).

DF Suggestions / Automatically apply CUT_X to objects when defining them

« on: December 02, 2022, 04:15:47 am »

So apparently, in the new release one can do:

Code: [Select]

[CUT_CREATURE:DRAGON]
[CREATURE:DRAGON]

So it's possible to overwrite a creature, and thus avoid duplicate raw errors.

But it seems like it would make sense to automatically apply the function of [CUT_CREATURE:DRAGON] whenever [CREATURE:DRAGON] is used, since there seems to be no desirable outcome of using CREATURE without CUT_CREATURE, in a situation where multiple mods may have named the same object ID. The only possible downside I could imagine is maybe a performance hit from doing this on the first defined version of an object (ie vanilla).

I'm assuming this isn't already the case, because of an answer in the AMA indicating that duplicate raws are still a problem, just that it's possible to avoid them:

https://www.reddit.com/r/dwarffortress/comments/z82m0g/im_tarn_adams_aka_toady_one_dwarf_fortress/iyag2mx/?context=3

Quote

Quote
Are duplicated raws still a problem (as in, breaking everything), or do mods later in the loading order that use the same ID for an object (eg, a mod that uses CREATURE:DWARF, without disabling the vanilla files) replace/overwrite the definition in previous mods/vanilla?
It's the same. A difference now at least is that you could do a select and delete to remove old entries with an intervening mod if you like.

DF Suggestions / Number beside the announcement icons, showing how many of that type there is

« on: November 24, 2022, 03:39:14 pm »

I see in the tutorial streams that "announcements" build up in groups under each icon; it would be good if it showed a number for how many announcements there were, before you clicked on it (that way you can tell how many have built up, and spot when new ones show up).

Either that, or at least something to show that there are unviewed/new announcements of that type (since viewing the announcements doesn't seem to dismiss them).

DF Suggestions / In premium, show the dimensions/size of "selection area", and mark the middle

« on: November 24, 2022, 02:19:30 pm »

This is what selections for designating looks like in the new release:

This is great, but it would be useful if there were somewhere displaying how large this dragged out area is (that goes for any designation in general), either as a tooltip on the side of the box, or in a fixed position somewhere, and possibly beside this, the absolute number of how many squares there are (for the mathematically lazy).

For example, in the above image, it would be 11x18 (or the other way around; I can't remember whether vertical or horizontal comes first), and also 198 squares. This information could also be shown for placing/building of objects or constructions (like bridges), and maybe when selecting already existing zones as well (so you can see at a glance for example, how big a zone or a farm is)

There could be also be a toggle option to show the numbers of each tile (distance from the corner being dragged from) instead of the green diamond shapes, showing the distance from the initial point being dragged out (starting with 1, not 0).

Another QOL feature would be highlighting the line of squares down the middle on each side (assuming that side has a middle/isn't an even number), for example, something roughly like this, but better looking/clearer than my quick edit:

The vertical side is 18 tiles so it doesn't have a middle to highlight (or maybe there could be a line in between the 2 middlemost tiles?), but if it was, it would also have a highlighted line of dots, and so you would also see the middle of the rectangle by where the lines meet.

DF Suggestions / Make all attackers work like ambushes (hidden until discovered by citizens)

« on: November 22, 2022, 12:25:34 pm »

I saw this mentioned in the recent Blind interview, and wanted to echo that idea here.

Werebeasts and kobolds (or "ambushes" in general) are invisible until a dwarf spots them (and you get no announcement until them), and I suggest this should apply for all the other invasion types; megabeasts, titans, forgotten beasts, and sieges alike. Maybe random animals/cavern creatures as well (no announcement for them though).

It would be both realistic simulation-wise, and !FUN!; imagine keeping guards posted somewhere in a tower see an invasion coming before they're already at your doors, or wandering into another section of the caverns and being attacked by a forgotten beast that you had no idea was already lurking just around the corner.

The announcement could possibly happen before they are spotted via line of sight, in the following ways:

- If justified by them being loud, like "making a racket by marching or banging war-drums, or roaring/stomping things" or something. But the announcement would be vague/only mention what is actually heard, not say specifically "the goblins are here" unless the sound is recognizable/identifiable by your citizens. The marching of goblins is little different to that of humans after all.
- If you received rumor that an invasion was on its way, you will get an announcement on the day they were projected (by the rumor) to arrive, reminding you that an attack is expected any time now.

You will of course get a second more definitive announcement once the attack is confirmed.

As for the issue Tarn mentioned of creatures "flickering in and out of view" when they repeatedly enter and exit the field of view when they're near the edge (which would be a bit weird/aesthetically displeasing), this could be solved either:

- The way he considered in the interview (only hiding them until they're first spotted, and then keeping them visible from then on).

- By putting an appropriate "countdown" for how long they must be out of view until they are hidden again (this would have the bonus of making it possible to "lose" enemies and worry about them hiding in some currently empty hallway). Also checking how far they are able to pathfind (so that they don't become stealthed again after you trap them in a small chamber of your fort, since you know where they are). Note that's how far they are ABLE to go; if they have a tunnel off to the caverns, it would make sense for them to vanish, even if they actually do stay in the room. Some kind of check for how big their "connectivity map" or whatever it's called.

My vote personally is for the second option.

DF Suggestions / Take more factors into account for worldgen/off-site battle winners

« on: November 06, 2022, 11:10:52 am »

Right now, apparently basically all that matters is how big the creature is, and its combat skills (and raid skills of the leaders, if applicable).

But this leads to things like steel blob titans with necrosis-inducing deadly dust being beatable by random large animals like elephants, and megabeasts in general dying out very quickly; it makes them more underwhelming than they should be. It would be good if the worldgen/off-map combat calculations took into account more things, like:

- Body materials (eg, if you mod dragon scales to be as hard as steel, or turn all their tissues into frail pudge, this should affect their viability). Compare materials/sizes of attacking body parts (eg large mouths with teeth) against the material of the body parts that would be getting attacked.

- Weapons/equipment used, as well as their materials vs the materials of the opponent (a band of dwarves with steel armor and weapons ought to stand a good chance against a bronze titan, an entire forest full of elves with wooden weapons should be basically doomed).

- Attributes, like strength, agility, and stamina.

- Sheer numbers; I'm told that worldgen battles are a series of 1v1s, which means you mostly just want smaller groups of skilled/large fighters, since adding others as well just gets them killed or captured with no benefit. A single very highly-skilled human may realistically be able to defeat 50 trolls in a row, but they surely couldn't beat even 7 trolls at the same time, because they can only defend against one at a time or so. Being able to beat 1 troll at a time does not translate to 50 at once in a battle (or heck, even 50 fellow humans of lesser skill!), unless the reason you can beat that 1 troll is "they are incapable of harming you noticeably even if you're not paying attention to them" or "you can destroy them utterly in one blow".

- Special abilities like dragonfire or other interactions like fire in general (note that this AoE stuff might negate "sheer numbers" a bit), deadly dust, spells that turn the opponent blind, contagious husk curses, etc.

- Bodily properties like whether or not they have a convenient "thought center" to destroy, or arteries to cut...

- Immunities to things like stunning, or paralysis (when up against opponents who can use it), or to spells/abilities of others (the advantage of fire from fire imps would be totally nullified by a fireproof opponent, for example, and EXTRAVISION would render blinding spells useless).

- "Terrain advantage" from location effects; if every severed limb or new dead person keeps coming back to un-life, evil locations should cause a problem with "every time one of your soliders dies, it turns into a new zombie combatant" (problems for both sides maybe, if two armies make the mistake of fighting on evil terrain).

DF Suggestions / Detailed magical creation/modification of bodies (either your own or others)

« on: November 02, 2022, 05:34:28 am »

Randomly generated experiments are good and all, as are experiments that are related to the original forms of the creature experimented on (which will presumably come after centaur problem is solved/mythgen is done), but taking it a step further, sometimes it should be possible to customize the creations in detail.

Sure pulling in dark energies to corrupt sheep into monstrous undead versions of themselves covered in eyes and horns and poison, but what if an aspiring necromancer has a certain aesthetic in mind and is aiming for that? What if they want their empire of monsters to have "theme" to it, like the use of certain colors, patterns, magical capabilities? Maybe you want your half-lizard half-sheep monsters to use specific parts from each, not just let the game randomly make its own idea of a "fusion" between them. Maybe you want all your monsters to be faceless creatures that sense through smell and hearing alone.

In some mythgens this kind of fine-grained/personal control over the outcome of transformations would be impossible (the dark energies give you what you're gonna get, and the best you can do is try different reagents to see if you like the result of that more), but it should be possible in others!

There could be a menu which, allows you to custom-design the bodily alterations, down to details like skin texture (which would be mentioned in the description obviously), body part colors (either just a specific palette or random within a certain selection), body parts used and their sizes, psychological alterations, etc. All subject to the limitations of the magic in that specific world of course.

This could also be broadly useful for things like the creation of magical automatons that aren't just "version of existing creature that mythgen spewed out, but made of different materials".

There could also be a more general way to modify many different creatures and get different results, but with some things the same; what I mean for example, is that you could design a generalize spell/curse that gives any creatures it affects say, skin made of flaming, green diamonds (and make them fireproof of course), and a tendency to give them horns even if they didn't have them already, but other than that, it does allow some freedom for the game to do some of its own random "details", so you can be surprised a bit by the results.

DF Suggestions / A notion of required sizes for body parts to work

« on: August 18, 2022, 07:13:37 am »

When magic comes along that lets you shrink body parts, it would be weird if you made a creature's wings tiny, but it could still fly, right? Logically, it should fall because the wings aren't big enough anymore.

Of course, fantasy creatures are able to fly even with unrealistic wing sizes, but even for them, surely there is a limit to just how small they can be made? A dragon or roc may be unrealistic with it's wings supporting such a weight, but even in the context of the fantasy setting where the rules are stretched, if you made them 5% of the size it would just be silly for them to keep in the air.

It would be possible to exempt creatures from this of course (after all, some don't even need wings at all), and set what is "allowed" for that specific creature.

This sort of thing could be applied to other body parts as well of course; shrunken hands can't hold the same weapons as before, tiny legs can't be used to walk (have to crawl with hands), and so on.

DF Suggestions / A notion of "prestigious" jobs, which power/status hungry people seek out

« on: July 29, 2022, 01:11:18 pm »

In different civs, certain jobs/professions should be perceived as more or less prestigious, giving people who have them higher social status, and being more appealing/desired by certain personality types, or those who are powerful already and have what they see as "better" options; so for instance, almighty wizards with high social status generally won't be fish cleaners (at least as much), because why do such "lowly" work when you can be a court adviser instead? What noble would demean themselves by farming? Of course, you can still have your humble "just wants to live in the woods and sell lumber" or "was elected as mayor, but really in their heart just wants to just train animals" types, but still.

Which jobs are prestigious would be determined by that civ's values, and if other suggestions about special cultural advancements are implemented (like, one nation known for their unique cheeses, vs another who makes excellent weapons), this may also impact the prestige of different jobs.

DF Suggestions / Mechanism for turning stairs into slides (and back) at the pull of a lever

« on: July 21, 2022, 09:43:34 am »

Make it possible to create stairs that can do this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLFvbTeemBk

DF Suggestions / Option to "lock" the difficulty settings (for the Steam release)

« on: May 28, 2022, 11:34:14 am »

So apparently the new difficulty settings that are editable ingame (in the Steam release) can be set right while you're in a fortress, and it takes effect as soon as you leave the options window, instantly.

That's nice for usability, but one thing I'd suggest in addition to this is a way to "lock" the difficulty, so that if one wants to avoid the temptation of altering these settings to make things easier on themselves partway through, they can do so. The lock would keep all settings relevant to difficulty (megabeast wealth triggers, whether sieges are enabled; all that kind of stuff) locked in place so they can't be changed while playing the fort/adventurer/while in the game.

For true emergencies/need for changing the settings related to FPS it should probably be possible to unlock the settings again, but this would be done by digging in the save files and manually changing LOCK:YES to NO, or whatever it looks like. Or at the very least, putting it in a menu that's not accessible while you're playing.

DF Suggestions / Allow mod authors to add ingame configurable settings for mods

« on: May 22, 2022, 07:44:59 am »

In FotF, there was a discussion a while back about letting individual mods have configurable "options" to enable or disable content:

Quote from: Toady One on March 01, 2022, 08:02:59 pm

Quote from: Mr Crabman
Do you think it would be feasible to do [mod options] before the first release? Even just being able to enable and disable particular raw files (or multiple raw files) from being loaded/read based on labeled checkboxes (maybe also with a descriptive "this will enable X" blurb written by the mod author) being ticked or not would go a long way, basically offering equivalent power to what we have now, and it would solve the potential problem of the workshop (and DFFD probably) being filled with similar but slightly different versions of mods. Being able to enable or disable specific chunks of raw files (marked by special tokens at the start and end of the "chunk") would be even better, but presumably a bit harder to implement.

It's feasible, the first one anyway. I'm not sure how fiddly the chunk one would get, since not everything is set up to be parsed the same way as the creature ones (which offer some of that "do what you want with the raw text" functionality), if I recollect.

So now that options for *vanilla* stuff are being added, I'd just like to throw this idea back out there, just in case it was forgotten. I believe this is important for modding, because it will mean that instead of having to publish a bunch of very similar versions of the same mod to DFFD or the Steam Workshop (especially modular mods), people can just upload the one, and the "variants" of it can be obtained by a user ticking or unticking the ingame options the mod author has defined.

DF Suggestions / Procedurally generated writing systems (to go with generated languages)

« on: March 23, 2022, 11:26:45 am »

Tarn is a fan of linguistic stuff/conlangs apparently, and plans to one day make DF procedurally generate languages for entities/civs/creatures which change over time like in real life, in all the lovely detail that makes this game so great (phonemes and agglutination and all that fun stuff).

I don't know if this is already planned (would not surprise me at all if it was), but a nice thing to go along with this would be procedurally generated writing systems/scripts. Scripts would come in a variety of forms, often a mixture of multiple (more exist, but I'll just list a few here):

- Alphabetic (each symbol represents a "segmental phonome")
- Syllabic (each symbol represents a syllable)
- Logographic (each symbol represents a whole word, or a concept like currency: $ is a logogram for instance despite English being mostly alphabetic)

More info about that here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writing_system#Functional_classification

And there are plenty of variations to be had in each of course, such as the direction of writing (like top-down, left-right, or right-left, or maybe more exotic systems like following curves, or writing the opposite way having a different meaning), and what kind of materials are traditionally used for writing by a given civ/culture (like wood carved runes vs engraving vs drawing on paper and so on).

And of course, the game could procedurally generate the actual symbols for us to look at (the appearance of the symbols of course would be generated realistically; the materials one writes on inform a lot about what the symbols look like), along with a chart of what sounds or words or whatever they match up to. They could be exported as an image, and if it would be technically feasible, maybe there could be a way to show actual written text displayed with these symbols as a font, even if just as an example of how it would look.