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Messages - Mr Crabman

Pages: 1 [2] 3 4 ... 28
16
DF General Discussion / Re: Future of the Fortress
« on: December 02, 2022, 06:44:35 pm »
Thanks for all the answers!

Quote from: Toady One on December 02, 2022, 06:04:59 pm
2. We don't specifically have a syntax for paragraph breaks.  I do have an internal parser that has them for things like legends mode paragraphs and such, but it also uses [] so I'd need to handle that carefully.

Don't specifically have one? Does that mean it's possible, but just weird and clunky? Something like:
Code: [Select]
[DESCRIPTION:First line of a description]
[DESCRIPTION:]
[DESCRIPTION:Second line of a description, after a paragraph break]
Would be somewhat awkward, but workable for when a mod needs a description of a moderate size that's still readable (or a changelog; I can't remember ever seeing a changelog that would fit in one line/paragraph comfortably).

Quote from: Toady One on December 02, 2022, 06:04:59 pm
And yeah, since we've been doing questions etc on this since the AMA, I was also thinking this morning about automating a CUT before any new object.  I'm not sure if this introduces problems?  It seems like it definitely solves more problems than it causes anyway.

Only problem I could imagine (if it's just a silent failure on nonexistent objects) is a small performance hit when loading the first versions of objects (in trying to delete previous ones that don't exist).

Quote from: Toady One on December 02, 2022, 06:04:59 pm
Creating objects by default with SELECT seems kind of dangerous since it would be empty and might not be filled by the calling mod.

Definitely the right call here.

17
DF Suggestions / Re: Possible simple pre-myth HFS tweaks
« on: December 02, 2022, 03:04:04 pm »
Quote from: Nordlicht on December 02, 2022, 02:14:31 pm
Or make them able to shapeshift into a humanoid or another animal form. In Battle and in their dimension they are in their natural form, and as humanoid they may wander the world and, depending on their spheres, try to manipulate people.

Edit:
Would work great with the syndroms. Maybe Priests could know from their gods that the demon of Misery is wandering the lands as pigeon and people start killing pigeons on sight to protect themselves.

I'm not 100% sure that can be done with current features (ie without waiting for myth and magic), and the aim of this thread was small suggestions that could be done relatively trivially.

Transformation into another form is possible, but keeping their original personality intact (and knowing when to appropriately do transformations) may take more work. Otherwise, your idea is pretty great.

18
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).

19
DF Suggestions / Re: Terrible Suggestions Thread
« on: December 02, 2022, 04:46:21 am »
So Putnam just confirmed this on Discord:
Quote
ironically i don't think multithreading the pathfinder would actually help, either
no, because you see, you have to wait for the pathfinder to be done before you go on to the next tick
and the pathfinder is the slowest thing in a tick by such a huge margin that any tick you pathfind on will have to wait for it anyway
pathfinding is way slower than people think and happens way less often than people think
i've seen people claim they think that dwarves might repath every time they move
if that were the case the game would not run at even 1 FPS
when a few animals are repathing every 10 ticks due to tightly closed doors the game falls to 3 FPS
even worse, it's somewhat rare that more than one thing is even pathing at the same time
meaning that you'd have it all threaded up only for only one of those threads to be used at once

Clearly then, Toady should make it so that all creatures do pathfind every tick, so that threading it will be beneficial!

20
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.

21
DF General Discussion / Re: Future of the Fortress
« on: December 02, 2022, 04:11:37 am »
Quote from: voliol on December 02, 2022, 02:42:24 am
Quote from: Mr Crabman on December 01, 2022, 03:26:01 pm
6. You said in the AMA that duplicated raws are still an issue (no automatic overwriting to resolve conflicts), but that "you could do a select and delete to remove old entries with an intervening mod if you like"

That phrasing intrigues me; does that mean simply that old mods (which now includes vanilla files) can be disabled/not loaded in the first place (by the user at world creation)?

Or are you implying that mods actually have a "delete previously defined versions of X object if it exists" command of sorts, like:
Code: [Select]
[EDIT:CREATURE:DWARF]
[REMOVE_OBJECT]Or something akin to that, that lets later mods define their own "fresh" dwarf (or just delete dwarves altogether) while still loading all the other vanilla creatures? (and likewise for other object types like items, buildings, entities etc)

Putnam mentions a "CUT_CREATURE" in this Reddit comment. It seems to be it. (I've gathered they've helped out Toady, why they know the new system)

Oh nicce! I was worried that this kind of thing had been too complicated to get done in time for the Steam release, because I didn't remember seeing it mentioned!

Well, question 6 is answered fully, so I'll remove it, and my initial question (in the AMA) about duplicate things is pretty much irrelevant then. Though applying CUT_CREATURE automatically when CREATURE is used seems like it would make sense, to wipe out duplicate raw errors once and for all.

I'm guessing the answer is yes, but is there a CUT_CREATURE and SELECT_CREATURE equivalent for all OBJECT types, including the graphics-defining stuff and creature variations?

And what happens if one uses a CUT_X tag (or SELECT_X) on an object that wasn't defined yet? For example, if CUT_CREATURE:DWARF, but the user disabled vanilla raws and has no other mod defining DWARF beforehand? Would `SELECT_CREATURE:undefined_creature` just silently not do anything or would it create the thing on the spot?

22
DF General Discussion / Re: Future of the Fortress
« on: December 01, 2022, 03:26:01 pm »
1. Do the new STEAM_TAG and STEAM_KEY_VALUE_TAG tokens accept any string value at all, or are they limited to pre-defined values (and if so, what are they)? Normally I see Steam workshops only using a limited number of tags that mods opt in to, like this for example:


Letting people define their own tag types sounds like... A recipe for problems.

2. Can mod descriptions be multiple lines? For instance, by putting newlines in the DESCRIPTION or STEAM_DESCRIPTION tags, or by using one tag per line? Same question goes for the changelog.

3. I see that files still have headers, like so (the first line here):
Code: [Select]
item_helm

[OBJECT:ITEM]
This header is required to load the file (it determines the loading order of files and such), and must be unique. Does it still need to be unique between mods?

4. Can different mods have files with the same name? Like, can another mod use `item_helm.txt` in its own object file at the same time as vanilla is loaded (provided that the object IDs inside the file are unique of course), or will it cause some conflict in processing later down the line?

5. Do you know what the Steam metadata is? Apparently STEAM_METADATA sets this https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/api/ISteamUGC#SetItemMetadata

But I myself have no clue what that's even for.

23
DF General Discussion / Re: Future of the Fortress
« on: November 30, 2022, 03:48:23 am »
Quote from: rickalbert on November 30, 2022, 02:17:26 am
  • How do we identify the differences between animals and their savage giant cousins? Do they have different art, or are they larger than a single tile?
  • Are there any Beasts/Titans that will take up more than one tile, or is that something you're not interested in doing?


Giant animals have enlarged art that's generally larger than one tile (though they don't actually exist outside one tile mechanically, it's just for visual purposes). And forgotten beasts/titans presumably do take up multiple tiles (again, just visually) as well, because the megabeasts definitely do.

Creatures actually mechanically being more than one tile is planned for a future update (if I remember right, it would be in the "siege engines/moving fortress parts" update). It's not clear which ones would be multi-tile though, since Toady said doing that for everything larger than the 2x2x3 tile size would just be too many.

24
Mod Releases / Re: [47.05] DwarfCrafted v1.2 - A Minecraft Mod
« on: November 30, 2022, 03:41:27 am »
Quote from: TheGoomba98 on November 29, 2022, 03:27:51 pm
Are there any plans to give wardens their ranged sonic boom attack?

Yep. I haven't had time to work on modding recently, but I'll get back into it soon.

25
DF Suggestions / Re: Terrible Suggestions Thread
« on: November 28, 2022, 06:28:34 am »
Creatures without beards will still liquefy upon adulthood, but won't be able to make a cocoon, and therefore won't be able to rebuild.

26
DF General Discussion / Re: Future of the Fortress
« on: November 26, 2022, 01:48:43 pm »
Quote from: SamBucher on November 26, 2022, 12:44:27 pm
The Dwarf Fortress development page mentions "automatons and magical prostheses" as part of Myth&Magic. These features seems innocent on the surface level, but actually raise a lot of question (hopefully not too many to answer):
1. Are the prostheses only for limbs, or will there be ones for every organ?
2. How will prostheses fair in comparison to the original body part?
3. Will there be magical prosthetics that give the user magic powers?
4. Will it be possible to:
4,1. attach a prosthetic in addition to a being's natural body parts? Imagine a craftsdwarf having 4 arms, 2 natural and 2 artificial, increasing work speed.
4,2. replace a healthy body part with a prosthetic one?
4,3. mix and match parts (replace a dwarf's legs with prosthetic arms)?
5. How much of a dwarf's body can be replaced until he is considered an automaton?
6. Will automatons be able to take roles of nobility?
7. Will there be automaton models besides the standard humanoid worker?
8. What will be the upkeep costs of an automaton (I presume they won't need food and alcohol)?
9. Will you be able to have an automaton-exclusive fortress or play as an automaton in adventure mode?
10. Will it be possible for one to achieve immortality not via necromancy, but by replacing aging flesh with machinery/putting one's soul into an automaton body?[/color]
Thank you in advance!

Not Toady, but:

1. Probably; prostheses will have to be coded to be able to act as stand-ins for body parts and their functions (eg, GRASP), so why not the other functions as well?

2. Definitely would vary from world-to-world, and situation to situation. Some prostheses will be crude peg-legs and hook hands (pretty much all worlds will have this I imagine), others will be magical automail arms, others may be literally fully living organic replacements, or even be improvements over the original.

3. Definitely, in some worlds; prosthetics would be some sort of item/equipment/body part blend, and all of these are going to have potential to be magical.

4. I wouldn't be surprised if all of these were possible, given that lots of weird body transformation stuff is planned anyway.

5. May depend on the world. I'd guess it would be whenever their thought body part is replaced, and/or their soul is lost/replaced. What's the difference between a "flesh automaton" and a "normal person"? It's all fuzzy, just words.

6. Probably, depending on what "automaton" means, and may vary. Some may be mindless servants that can't act without orders from their creator, others may be freely willed beings. This answer goes for question 9 as well.

7. Absolutely; there's no way this game of all things will have hardcoded automaton models, especially in an update that aims to procedurally generate entire races. I guarantee that automatons will be treated in the code much like normal creatures are, but with relevant differences like different materials for their body parts, and different sustenance requirements etc (in many ways, a Bronze Colossus could be considered an "automaton" already, just uncontrollable and impossible to create).

8. Will vary from world to world without a doubt. Some will require absolutely nothing, some will require sacrifices of the best crops to the god of metal every full moon, others will be fueled by flesh & blood and will seek it out on their own accord, others will require the concentration/mana of their creator... And of course, some may need food.

10. Almost certainly, in some worlds. I expect there will be many of ways to achieve immortality, and many of them revolving around putting one's soul into something that doesn't age. Note that not all worlds may even have a such thing as souls at all (eg, the "zero magic" worlds).

27
DF Suggestions / Re: Terrible Suggestions Thread
« on: November 25, 2022, 04:54:14 pm »
To maintain balance, Tarn should start gathering the Infinity Stones...

28
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).

29
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.

30
DF Suggestions / Re: Terrible Suggestions Thread
« on: November 24, 2022, 08:51:44 am »
To solve performance issues from pathfinding, shrink the game to only one tile, so no pathing is necessary.

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