Bay 12 Games Forum

I've been following the development log of dwarf fortress for a couple years now (actually 23 months).  I've enjoyed it thoroughly and I think I've come to understand a bit about the way Toady thinks.  But for the past few months, I've been a little lost.  I'm not exactly sure what this numerical countdown represents.

I'm going to move on to explicitly planning and coding the framework for the underground for this release. As usual, I'll post a larger blurb here in a day or two once I get that sorted out. That'll be the last category of changes, and then the idea is to go back and get everything finished up. That will take a while of course, a long while, and there will likely be countdowns again. I'm always about the countdowns.

- Toady, Dev Log 2008.10.14

So here's what I think is going on.  "Coding the framework" means developing the new objects and structures that will now hold the game data and perhaps also rewriting the raws to handle the new format?  Since adding new entirely new objects in and new properties to existing objects is pretty trivial from a coding standpoint, am I to understand that the entire object system is being reworked into a new (possibly extensible) version?  And that these numbers are the numbers of objects that are left to be converted?  Or do the numbers also include the raws being filled in for the new object hierarchy?

If I understood right, the previous objects had lots of bit flags and rather than using full pointers, Toady was using byte or multi-byte sized offsets from various locations in memory (maybe from the start of the geographical chunk?).  Is that system being replaced by full vectors and maps and whatnot?  I've been writing C++ professionally for 7 years and I'm still constantly learning better ways to do things so I think I'm sort of projecting my own lessons on the dev log.

From the way the bloats and features and whatnot are recorded, I have gathered that Toady makes actual todo lists--todo lists of epic length.  So my imagination has Toady next to his computer with a 52 page print-out of objects that he checks off as he updates them.

It doesn't really matter of course.  Whatever it is will be done when it is done.  But just about every morning I check and see what the current number is and if Today has posted anything exciting.  I feel like I could be more encouraged watching the number drop if I could relate to it more--if I knew what it meant.  Can someone please explain to me what is actually going on?

As I was reading the Silmarillion I kept thinking of it in terms of the World Generation now being worked on for DF.  I have to imagine that these two suggestions have been made before, but I couldn't find them in the search so forgive me.  Both relate to Fey moods (which occurred relatively often in the Silmarillion (and yes, I know Universe_of_DF != Universe_of_Tolkien)).

1.) Military dwarves/creatures should go fey.  They should get a temporary insane bonus to agility and strength and whatnot and be able to accomplish incredible feats, like the single handed slaying of a dragon or laying waste to an overwhelming goblin invasion.  Naturally this should not happen often.  If the dwarf survives, he/she should then become a legendary warrior of his/her weapon of choice.  Perhaps this is in and I've never seen it, but I've played a lot of DF.

2.) Fey moods should happen as historic events.  Combat fey moods should allow even a weak civilization to conquer huge chunks of territory.  Object creation fey moods should create incredibly valuable artifacts (e.g. the Ring of Power, or the Silmarils) which should add bonuses to the holding civilization (faster reproduction, more resources, etc..., or to the entity holding them like unnaturally long life, hit point bonuses, etc...) but also be a cause for jealousy and dissention.  They should be capturable or giftable and even tradable, but should be few in number and eventually end up (in year 1051 or whatever) at a particular place and be accessible to the adventurer or to capture via armies in fortress mode.

I have no doubt that Toady has thought of these things, and little doubt that others have posted about them, but I was so excited that I just had to.  

Cheers!  May your losses be incredibly fun!