Bay 12 Games Forum

jonask84:  You should post a png the height and width you want and with a diamond shaped magenta area at the bottom showing ware the floor tile will line up with the graphic.  Artists can then use this as a template and reference as they will know not to put any part of the creature graphic below that diamond, its also handy for making sure the creature appears centered in the tile.  SimCity 2000 used a similar system in an editor that allowed you to pixel paint new buildings.

Books are something that have been desired for a long time but some of your ideas sound a bit too modern for my taste.

On a purely material level using parchment is more appropriate then paper, though paper would also have existed the transition to paper was driven by the printing press.  The modern movable type Printing press was created in 1450 right at the historical cut-off point for DF (per Toady), given its very mechanical nature though I think most people would be willing to give it to dwarves because of their very mechanical inclinations.

I'm sure 'Journalist' is not appropriate though, real newspapers (as in Private for profit and independent news disseminating businesses) are clearly outside the DF time period (they originate in the 17th Century according to Wikipedia).  But government based 'news' publications did exist much much earlier and in many cultures, though clearly this was little more then "The Kings Proclamations".  I'd change this concept to the "Herald" and remove all the "fighting the man" stuff, the Herald will simply be an agent of the King/power print a Prava style flier that would have a small positive moral boost for the reader.  In the absence of Paper the Herald could just default to a 'town crier' after all their will be a lot of illiteracy.

Hurray!!!   (9th download)

People need to be cognizant that their are different sizes of crossbow so all these rate of fire citations need to for specific types in order to be useful.  My understanding is that a 'light' battlefield crossbow would have about half the rate of fire of a SKILLED bowman, ware as a 'heavy' crossbow which would be typically used to defend a castle would be half again as slow primarily because it use a winch to pull the string ware as the light crossbow is pulled by hand usually placing it on the ground and using the front mounted stirrup to perform a upward pull on the string using the strong muscles of the back.

The both bow and crossbow the larger the draw-weight the slower the reload time and the longer the range and force the projectile strikes with.  In both a normal bow and a crossbow the wielders strength and skill should provide a bonus to the rate of fire, but the bonus is greater for the bow.  Strength also gives the bow a range and damage advantage ware the crossbow has a fixed range and fixed damage.  In a system can be designed that takes these factors into account and exposes them to moding then I'd be satisfied.

Could you share some of those files Telcontar, Teal and I would probably like too have a look.

I personally find the most effective difficulty mod is to give dwarves [SLOW_LEARNER] which really slows down skill gain and thus the speed & quality of everything else include skill gain from a Strange Mood.

Second, this is a MAJOR source of balance issues and the ability to immediately create a high value export industry from day one and make so much money that you can buy an entire caravan without even thinking about it.  We would need to be able to apply percentages under 100 to make low quality stuff worth much much less.

I think I'd go with something like this (value starts low but doubles with each level, damage/block remains the same)

[QUALITY:STANDARD]
  [DAMAGE:100]
  [DEFENSE:100]
  [VALUE:25]
[QUALITY:WELL-CRAFTED]
  [DAMAGE:120]
  [DEFENSE:120]
  [VALUE:50]
[QUALITY:FINELY-CRAFTED]
  [DAMAGE:140]
  [DEFENSE:140]
  [VALUE:100]
[QUALITY:SUPERIOR-QUALITY]
  [DAMAGE:160]
  [DEFENSE:160]
  [VALUE:200]
[QUALITY:EXCEPTIONAL]
  [DAMAGE:180]
  [DEFENSE:180]
  [VALUE:400]
[QUALITY:MASTERFUL]
  [DAMAGE:200]
  [DEFENSE:200]
  [VALUE:800]