Bay 12 Games Forum

Idea for a new project: The Most Interesting Adventurer In The World

... vs Morul.

One one hand, our dear dorf has hundreds of extra legendary levels. On the other hand, an adventurer has one thing Morul does not, cannot, and will not ever have. Legendary Throwing.

My proposition: Someone gen a Large world, and take it to the Age of Emptiness. Then, (retire and?) copy this omnicidal adventurer into a 15-z deep pit made of obsidian (That's SOLID obsidian, folks! Better brush up on your magma management!) and engraved by a team of Legendary Engravers (Perhaps Morul could help?), then put Morul and Urist McMurdereverything in the pit, and wage them against each other for our amusement, in every permutation we can imagine. With shields, without shields, in adamantine, in wood, on obsidian, on sand. With bare fists, with artifact weapons, with swords, hammers, crossbows and spears. In the pit, surrounded by skeletal elephants. In the water, surrounded by sturgeons. With clowns, with horribly overpowered megabeast, in a three-way free-for-all with Ironblood, whatever you can think of.

Then, when we tire of pitting them against each other, we team them up. Morul and Urist McMurdereverything versus a dozen Bronze Colossi! Versus burny clowns, versus magma men, Versus 50 Giant Eagles standing on a 20-z tall 3x3 pillar, whatever sick fantasies we can come up with. And once, when we're finally done, and no one can think of another challenge ever again... we ship them.

It should be possible to level an adventurer to far exceed the capabilities of any fortress dwarf, simply because the relative timescales favour adventurers in actions per year. It is complicated by requiring food, water and rest, but these can be turned off if cheating is your thing. There's only so much fighting you can do with a massive pack of food (and a nearby pool for water) before you run out and have to buy more. And in adventure mode, buying more is difficult. If you first collect all HFSite from the gameworld in fortress mode and convert it into mugs then your adventurer would have a near-infinite amount of purchasing power (requiring trips to collect the mugs, of course). By the time your strength is over legendary you would probably be able to carry an incomprehensibly large amount of rations anyway.

In summary, I want to pit an adventurer dwarf who has spent his entire life strangling skeletal groundhogs against Morul.

It's more likely that calling the origins of the universe (assuming it has one) an 'explosion' is somewhat of an understatement.

The universe itself - that which existed before the Planck epoch - is not necessarily observable. However, the observable universe definitely had an origin. This says nothing about previous observable universes, mutually unobservable universes, or anything else other than the observable universe. But it does mean that the oft-cited "criticism" of cosmology that "something can't come from nothing" is not relevant to the observable universe; we can't observe the unobservable universe (by definition) to verify that it doesn't exist.

As to whether explosion is an accurate word or not; you're spot on. An explosion refers to the rapid expansion of a volume within a space. The inflationary epoch was a staggeringly fast expansion of space itself. It's simultaneously not an explosion (in definition) and the mother of all explosions (in spirit ).

I successfully cleared out the underdeep for the first time in my DF career (Thank you, thank you), with my only casualty being a young recruit who was so emotionally scarred by the experience that he was stricken by melancholy.  His many kittens marching into battle with him may have also played a role in the trauma, as well as the victory.  So I'm patting myself on the back and racing against the clock to get him a fancy tomb built before he starves, and in the meantime I decide it would be a good idea to pit the new refugees so their bones are all in a tidy pile when they meet a similar fate.  I also set about deconstructing the various upright pikes and cages I recently acquired.

But what didn't I do?  I didn't actually send my elites down there to clear and secure the orifice, so when my peasants and furnace operators and engravers get down there to clear out the refuse, they bump head-first into the pokey little horror and are decimated.  The A-team quickly arrives on-scene and remedies the situation, but the many deaths and burn victims put my fort a full season behind schedule on the cleanup and resource exploitation, and push me dangerously close to a tantrum spiral in the bargain.

Rule #4:  Double Tap.  Thoroughness is survival.

Rule #1: Cardio. Because in DF it can take years to kill a zombie.

Rape is one of those weird issues at this point, because sex in DF is done by spores at present, and the spores only seem to be released upon marriage. I doubt Toady intends to implement actual sex any time soon (potentially for adventure mode way down the track), but at that time I see no good reason to prevent non-consensual sex. Besides breaking immersion, such an act sets a precedent for other morality enforcement. In (almost?) all games available for sale in the West (not sure about elsewhere), it is impossible to kill children. Some games achieve this by not even including them. Others make children invulnerable, and a few simply make you unable to try even ineffectual attempts at harm directed at them.

At what point do we say "No, you can do a lot of things with your genitals/fists but not that."? If we have goblins and daemons in the world, corrupt intentions and all, it would make sense for them to commit what we rightly find atrocious. Will we find these actions recorded in the annals of worldgen history and not ever actually "performed" in-game, or will we find that evil NPCs can do what the player is not allowed to. What if the player wants to role-play as one of those evil NPCs? Then it becomes an issue of whether the prohibition is hard-coded or arises from the raws or emergent culture. If it emerges from the raws, why allow the player to transgress on some of the established dwarven ethics and not all? If the player can still commit an [ETHIC:...:UNTHINKABLE] such as torturing, why would they not be allowed to eat another sapient once they have the ability to process corpses?

A 'happy medium' in my opinion is that the player should be allowed to do whatever they please within what is possible in the game, ethics aside. But if they transgress on a matter the "possessed" adventurer considers abhorrent, then it seems only fair that there be a violent physical backlash at first. Non-stop nausea for example, with less nausea each time something unthinkable is done until the "possessee" is accustomed to it. And since we know that there are physical causes in the brain of most psychological conditions, it is reasonable that (assuming there is some way to simulate them) they come into effect as appropriate. Stress-induced hallucinations perhaps.

Part of the objection to these controversial elements as I understand it is that they are essentially free of consequence. Sure, the town might try to kill you if you accidentally bludgeon the mayor to a bloody pulp with his daughter's mini-forge, but there are physiological consequences to that action. Unless the brain of the individual - the physical brain, not the "possessing" brain - functions like that of a sociopath then committing certain acts for the first time will cause extreme nausea, blackouts, aching muscles and all manner of psychological conditions (see post-traumatic stress disorder). The only way for that to be avoided is if we pretend the "possessor" intercepts all sensory data before it is interpreted by the physical brain of the "possessee".

So add controversy. Add consequences. If Toady decides he wants to allow such features then I suggest he implement a model of possession, wherein the player (in adventure mode - artifact creators in fortress mode) and the host compete for control of the body. It might ruin the fun to some extent if the host could take control of more than just reflex actions, though.

Ballooning spiders? I think we're still multiple key mechanics short of actual physics-based flight/gliding.

Unfortunately yes, but I figure a big balloon of silk coming from the spinneret filled with a light gas (hydrogen for flammability!) and the [FLIER] tag would be good enough for now. It would have to be inflated permanently for the caste though, which could be funny anyway.

Only problem though is how to handle structure damage and HPs, so I think goblins will still be stopped by even a thin glass door.

Plate glass or otherwise reinforced glass would give a bit of time, but even a determined kobold could break through it given time and the right tools.

The whole structure damage and building HP stuff was discussed a couple months ago, so its at least 200 pages back.

There would have to be a minor change for a combination of partial damage and repair to be a useful mechanic for doors and walls; currently dwarves can smooth the inside of a magma pipe from outside it, and Toady would have to update the implementation of such things to factor in sides (such smoothing a wall only working on the side the job is done). Otherwise we could just have the classic RTS stand-off: attackers chopping at the front of your tower, defenders repairing it from behind.

I'm sure Toady will get around to that eventually. It's an understandably low priority at this point. It might make sense to do it during the siege improvements however.

As to those combat damage mechanics quotes... I'm getting shivers just thinking about it. Soon slimes will be a viable enemy. And ballooning spiders. And so much wonderful awesome stuff to manifest our wildest dreams nightmares.

If I understand correctly, tissue layers will rupture or split if enough force of the appropriate type is applied. Will it be possible for layers to slough off? As an example, could a limb conceivably be stripped of the muscle and flesh, assuming that the creature somehow survived? Similarly, could an organ embedded in a particular layer fall out due to damage to surrounding tissue?

Quote from: Neruz on January 11, 2010, 08:16:24 am

Quote from: Shoku on January 11, 2010, 08:12:49 am

The would certainly be interesting to see hapen in the game but how in the world could you have the game generate tactics for the predators like that?

Learning AI. Would eat the pants off a modern system, but systems X years from now might be able to pull it off.

Making Ai that isn't tricks and hacks mostly involves uber-computing and ultra-programming. Unless someone goes and makes a package where it's mostly done I don't think the time to develop a system like that is something we want to wait through.

A genetic algorithm might be able to develop the fighting styles, but it would have significant disadvantages. First and foremost, it wouldn't be realtime. So it would have to develop a non-situational fighting style based purely on information in the raws at worldgen, or we would have to sit through the algorithm every time we wanted to update a creature's fighting style. Could actually be done, but as you say, I sure as hell don't want Toady to spend his time on such a solution when he has much better things he could do. I think simplistic AI is fine for now. Maybe consider better AI (apart from sieges) for version 2 or some other far off date.

In soviet forest retreat, wood carve you!