Bay 12 Games Forum

...choose from a selection of hovels and such.

That's what I'm talking about when I say:

The sites remain hard-coded, but Toady has everyone on the forums help write that code to make a nice variety of designs.

Essentially, the people from the forums are making the different styles of buildings; the reason why I said hard-code it is because that's easier than making a raw file interface.

That's so similar to a workshop raw, might as well make it one (for humans only); after all, you need some reason to build hovels in a potential Human Mode, who wants to spend 20+ wood to do so?  This way, it becomes feasible to make such single structures.  Besides, hovels should be easily destroyed by stuff like trolls.

Sounds nice, but I think that one or both of two other ways might be better:

1.  The sites remain hard-coded, but Toady has everyone on the forums help write that code to make a nice variety of designs.
2.  The smaller buildings (like hovels) are like workshops that have impassible tiles all around the edge, a door and a roof.  They'd be made out of ~5 wood and a door; would be empty, but with the ability to put other buildings (like beds) inside; and would be one of the most important buildings in Human Fortress Mode.

Shouldn't Cacame be fasting and vengeance?  After all, he's completely sworn off cannibalism.

Spoiler: RAEG! (click to show/hide)

"Clownite" is stupid enough as is, but "Clownite 2.0"?!?!?!
RAAAGEEE!!

Ditto.

Yes, I did, but so far I've been having trouble getting this to work.  So far, there has only been one confirmed case of a hero dwarf, and he had a rather uneventful (if long) life.

Quote from: Supermikhail on April 23, 2010, 01:53:16 pm

I've once heard on the radio that Tolkien was very... Christian. And in Christianity nothing much is above prophecies (I'm pointing at the Apocalypse).

I've once read on the internet that Tolkien was crazy and LoTR was a way of escaping reality for him. Your point is?

Besides, Arda is as far removed from Christianity as possible. Whatever Tolkien's own beliefs were, he clearly didn't feel the need to burden his creation with them.

Actually, Tolkien's mythology is almost completely compatible with Christianity.  The Silmarillion was written from the elven point of view, which has a few interesting points in it:

1.  The elves don't have a religion, because they already understood who made the world go 'round.
2.  Said creator (Ilúvatar, which has the same connotations in Elvish as "the Lord" does in English) is an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent being whose nature is not explained in the book, except that He was beyond ANYONE'S comprehension (even that of the Valar!)
3.  This being created the Valar to please Him; and so too Arda (the earth).
4.  The greatest of the Valar and therefore the second-most powerful being in existence was Melkor, but he rebelled and was later named Morgoth.
5.  Many of the Valar then entered Arda to serve inside it; they were later mistaken for gods by men.
6.  The elves were called the first-born children of Ilúvatar, Men were the second.
7.  The elves were completely contained inside the bounds of the world, and therefore were immortal (e.g. they couldn't leave if they wanted to, and the weight of the world was indeed heavy upon them).
8.  Men were given the gift of being able to leave the world itself, (aka die) but Morgoth misled them to believe that that was a curse. (Seriously, if life sucks so much, why would you not want to leave?)
9.  The final fate of man was not known to the elves, but they said it may be revealed to men somewhere else. (aka the Bible)

So if you think about it, Tolkien did a really good job at getting pagan mythology to fit into christian religious teachings.  Every moral lesson, for instance, actually coincides with age-old christian values.



And as for the dwarves...
      The 7 fathers of the dwarves were created by Aulë, (see below) who was impatient with the emptiness of the world in the time before the elves awoke.  He wasn't supposed to do that.  Besides, the dwarves were as lacking of life as Toady's, only being able to act as and when ordained.  Ilúvatar, who of course knew what was going on, came down and confronted Aulë; who repented, offering to destroy his creation.  The dwarves were cowering, and from that it was known that they had, in fact, been given life.  However, they were then put to sleep and hidden in different places under the mountains, to await the time of their awakening: after elves but before man.

Now, Aulë was one of the most similar of the Valar to Melkor, with the important difference of remaining loyal.  He was the smith of the Valar, crafting things merely to create them, and giving them away freely afterwords.

A very *interesting* fact is that his wife is Yavanna, who created TREES and asked for the creation of the Ents to guard them.