Thanks to Knight Otu, GoblinCookie, Dirst, therahedwig, Untrustedlife, Trainzack, Inarius, Daniel the Finlander, Shonai_Dweller, TheFlame52, burned, iceball3, Bumber, vjmdhzgr, Max^TM, PatrikLundell, Mr S and everybody else that asked questions this time. It was pretty suggestion heavy, which I'd like to avoid, so that the suggestion forum doesn't flood in here, but perhaps in the bug-fix part of the cycle it's more difficult to focus on current developments.
Is there an indicator about a dance or song start attempt in place or are there plans to have one so we can "fill in" for the extra spot when npcs go to start a performance?
Yeah, we were going to do that, but there were complications with creating a blank spot for the player that they can hold on to for a bit. It's do-able, but we were in a rush before the 42.01 release at the point it came up. It'll probably just be a random addition in the future now.
I've noticed that immigrants with extensive family histories have a lot more gods on their worship list than those that were generated without families, or with only their immediate families. Did you make it so children adopt the gods of their parents, or how do they decide? Does it use the same logic in worldgen and at the coming of adulthood in fortress mode?
Whatever the logic, when you get 3 or 4 rungs down a family tree dwarves end up worshipping every god in the pantheon, which is a pain. Is this an intended challenge, or a bug in worship list pruning?
In world gen, the children inherit the religions of their parents as they grow up, so it starts to add up. The new temples turned this into a balance issue, which we haven't handled yet. In dwarf mode, as an early convenience, religion is just passed from the mother to the baby at birth, so the problem isn't compounded, but it is also a sillier system.
is there a plan for the near future to make the champion useful again?
Nothing in the near future. It could come up when we get to status and customs after the myth stuff, but it's hard to say.
[What] are the [short-term/long-term/no] plans to add nonverbal communication [to adventure mode]? Currently, spitting is possible and characters cry when they're upset, but there's no way to laugh or to smile or to tap someone on the shoulder or give someone a hug.
It's something we'd like to do -- we have those abstract mannerisms and we almost got to an actual wrestly hug with the reunions. There are always weird little complications.
Does the personality of a leader determine the nation's foreign policy during worldgen? I've seen evidence to support it.
Yeah, it uses several of the facets, but it's not super interesting.
Water and liquids is something that the games never really done well since it was 2d, the lack of flooding from a river and the lack of a cave river as well as magma one makes the game feel a bit less then it was. Are there plans to change the way liquids work at some point so they allow flooding as well as be better on performance as well as moving across the same z level faster then it is now?
Might rain also be done a bit better so it crosses different bioms instead of just raining perfectly in the biom that its allowed too?
This might be asking too much but how viable would it be to allow the game to be able to change the course of a river that might be prone to doing so? (Was thinking yellow river)
Fluids were broken in 2D and were one of the main reasons we went to 3D in the first place, though we did give up the seasonal flooding for that. Bringing floods back is difficult. Changing the course of rivers is more difficult since it interacts with the world and mid-level maps. I'd ultimately like more diverse water systems etc. underground, but I'm not sure when we'll get to that again.
Does the number of goblins killed in a siege effect global goblin population?
Yeah, they are all real, but it doesn't know how to pull from outlying villages yet, so there's a limit on the area of the effect. Global populations can also increase if there are enough of them, regardless of what you are managing at your fort.
So since in the future Demigods will be genuinely semi-divine. Have you decided on the exact method the game will dole out their divine gifts? Random, player's choice, or somehow earned with direct interaction with your parent?
I do like how in essence Demigod is kind of an entirely different type of play.
I'm not sure -- there'd probably be a player's starting choice, especially if there are significant differences, and the ability to let the computer decide, as with most things. Once it's far enough along that you might interact with your parent, then the starting situation might end up more restricted, but it's not clearly exactly how that would unfold. The extent of the smearing of powers over the character's life is one of those things that could be offloaded over time to the magic system generator if the myth maker understands divine parentage a bit better.
Will siege armies ever have different goals?
It has been a hope for a long time, though the flipside of that is that it has taken a long time and we have no idea when we'll get there. The post w.g. armies have different goals now, and there are differences between the ones that attack the fort even now, but it needs a lot of work.
As the game goes "ha ha, nope" and crashes when an NPC drinks a cage which contains you, I never actually got to check and see if there were any Toadyism's included like the "there is no sunlight when you are dead" stuff. Is there a specific message if someone drinks you? I assume the usual "You have died in a cage." would pop up, but am naturally curious if there may be more.
I don't think it understands at all what is going on. It's a bug so I didn't set up an easter egg for it.
What makes an army conquer or destroy as opposed to pillaging? It's not site type.
Post-world gen, it just works with a population check vs. army size since we haven't gotten into it. In world generation, it looks at the size of the army and whether or not the entity def likes the site type, whether they have an administrator position, whether they have people to relocate to the site in general, whether diplomacy is possible (e.g. can't communicate with kobolds, so no administrator), and if they enslave or kill civilians.
Toady, did you go and make cavern creatures hyper-fertile for reasons known only to you?
It's probably related to the bug fix that stopped creatures from requiring a marriage-frame-of-mind before breeding.
In the forseeable future will you do for food what has been done with music/dance/poetry? I'd really like to see legendary chefs execute extremely complicated signature dishes, and I'd like more complex food preparation reactions to be possible: meat preservation, fattening animals, etc.
Yeah, that was the hope with the whole recipe thing that didn't make 42.01. I don't think we'll get to many nuances/new practices with the first pass, but they'd start coming in.
Adventure mode related: don't know if this was addressed already, couldn't comb over the whole thread, but, are we gonna see personalized (and customizable in the "speech" folder) speech patterns for different races? It's kind of a strange dissonance right now that goblins and hostile bandits/criminals are as polite as any friendly race/group. Same goes for similar always-hostile modded civ. You'd think they'd "greet" you with insults and angrily tell you to "Go away!" as a "goodbye", and so on and so forth for the trade window and other talk options.
On a similar note, will we see customizable embark messages for modding purposes?
Personalizing speech is a difficult problem, since adding the variation is a ton of work and it already takes a lot of time just doing the basic options. The "data/announcement" (where embark messages are), "data/dipscript" and "data/speech" folders are outdated and will wander to readable text raws over an unspecified timeframe.
Will civilizations that don't value knowledge and thus don't build libraries be able to develop technologically once practical uses for inventions are created?
I imagine the whole division will become less stark once the game actually starts using them for anything. Right now they really are knowledge-for-knowledge's-sake and the use of the value seemed appropriate.
Toady, do you expect you'll move the ability for improvements to change the colors of items out into the raws anytime soon?
I have no idea when a given thing will make it out, if it's not something I'm working on.
Earlier I was looking at this old Threetoe story and was wondering, what with the upcoming magic and artifact arc, will things like other planes (dreamworld, expanded underworld, afterlife (see below)) be considered for inclusion? In addition, will an afterlife (beyond the ghost features, more in the sense of a physical place or something) be considered for both adventurers, possibly giving them a second chance or at least something to do after being killed, and for fortress mode, expanding the ghost mechanic, perhaps allowing things like channelling, interaction with the dead via mediums or dreams, etc?
Yeah, Threetoe wrote that story specifically because those are all things that we want to do. The myth generator/magic stuff we are doing with the next major release (or however it works) will form the groundwork for this to happen, though having critters located on two different planes requires a large rewrite so it isn't expected to be jumped into without some forethought.
Is the lack of a Magic Sphere a conscious choice?
Yeah. When I was going through real-world pantheons to build the sphere list, there was stuff like "magic" under, say, Hecate, but I passed it over because it just seemed like the word didn't have a universal meaning we could work with. In a world where magic will be more real and diverse, a "magic" sphere might not even be coherent (it probably isn't that coherent in the real world for all the deities given that sphere, but I haven't really thought about it). The lack of coherence is probably true of many of the spheres, between cultures, really, but on the bright side we'd have an opportunity even in the no-magic worlds for custom affinities based on culture, so that a deity could be associated with divination or curses, for instance, even if such things don't work. And if they do work, all the better.
Actually: Are you still hoping to be able to get the between-site/roadside taverns and/or inns working for a 42.xx bump, a la the big 40.14 world activation or 40.19 stress/emotion changes update? I recall there being difficulties getting them in while the rest was ready to push out but can't find if there was more stated about what your plans there were.
I still haven't quite figured out "small" sites. It might be delayed until it fits in with a larger small-site push (like the lumber/mining/isolated temple/etc. stuff that'll be starting up with the related embark scenarios). It would be nice to have stuff sprinkled all over without the associated overhead of the full site definition (bandit camps suffer from this now).
What skill governs the construction of any given assembled instrument?
It uses what it considers the most important piece of the instrument and, based on that, any of 10 crafty skills. It would be preferable to have things like luthiers, but we didn't get to that. I don't think there's an easy way to check right now, except after you've made one it'll be governed by the material type of the finished instrument. There is a weird thing where carpentry and masonry are used for large instruments though (instead of wood/stonecrafting). So a weird mess in addition.
You recently added more hearth orders so I was wondering about this: Currently you can join a bandit gang (and even necromancer groups) in adventure mode as a lieutenant but they never seem to tell you to do anything, will you be making bandit leaders give players orders to harass nearby villages and, will players ever be able to establish their own bandit gangs?
You can essentially start a bandit gang now by getting friends together and being a jerk (demanding items and so forth), but yeah, it doesn't recognize your group unless you actually claim a site. You'll eventually get to name your group without a site claim, and hopefully the game can also be taught to treat your group properly based on your deeds. We're also hoping to blur the bandit distinction a bit, since all the village lords are essentially the more successful bandits right now anyway, in some sense. A portion of that might be reasonably near-term, depending on the various bandit changes we'll be doing over the next few releases. But yeah, at the base level, it's missing that a bandit leader can order you to harass a town, and the order they give to other people should be unified with that when it happens.
Would it be a simple thing to enable regular non-dwarf migrants now? Considering how multi-cultural civs are, it's actually a bit strange how they still seem to be all dwarves these days.
It's a simple thing technically to turn it on, but I'm not sure I'm ready to do it yet, since the existing clothing and military equipment issues would just be compounded. We'll probably stick with the petition baby step for a while longer.
In DF, scrolling a mouse's scroll wheel forward zooms the map out, and scrolling it backwards zooms it in. This is the opposite of most applications- why is this, and are there any plans to change it?
I don't remember the decision-making on any of the SDL port stuff. I wasn't even aware that it worked that way, though I might have been the one to set the option. I'd personally prefer it the other way.
And speaking of randomized creatures, I did a little test recently: I genned a world with 1000 types of werebeasts, and searched the uncompressed save with a hex-editor. I found that werereptile-curses are considerably more common (28 was the least amount I saw for a given animal, and it seemed common for them to be in the 40's) than weremammal or weremarsupial-ones (both of which seem to have between 8 and 15 of a given animal). And that's not counting werelizard-curses, which are in a league of their own with a whopping 138 instances. What gives?
There are more kinds of mammals (like 64 possible for werebeasts? it might leave off some amphibious/bat ones), so it reduces the chances of each specific one to avoid a mammal flood. The generic lizard is given more weight since it's more vague and presumably encompasses more things. It's a matter of taste I guess, though it was more about biasing toward a single werelizard curse type rather than handling 1000 different curse types gracefully. There are some unfinished notes in this section about repeats and so on, which would presumable have it go through each available animal in turn rather than use the weights to handle 1000 curses.
How exactly do the skill levels past legendary work? I believe it's generally recognized that legendary+5 is the highest meaningful skill level, but is there an actual decrease in how much each skill level gained does past that? A few years ago when the shaft of enlightenment bug was discovered, it was found that using it could bring skill levels above legendary+70, and that there was indeed a notable difference at that point. What was intended to happen with these incredibly high experience levels?
It depends on the skill. The roll result just goes up in a straight line with level, so people can always be measured against each other in contests like combat rolls, and a legendary+55 will perform roughly twice as well as a legendary+20. For craft jobs it's different since we only have 5 quality levels, and at some point you almost consistently roll high enough to get level 4, and level 5 is a flat 1/3rd chance (and 10 higher on the roll). However, you can technically still roll low enough to get lesser craft qualities, and every additional legendary level decreases the chance of those mistakes. It would just be very rare. Your raw roll still increases linearly. There's more that could be done with high craft quality, of course, but I don't really have a strict plan for how it should go.
one reply you made implies that adventurers no longer being able to commit cannibalism and craft things (if modded in) from sentient body parts ( see issue: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=9171 ) was not intended behavior. Was that implication correct, or did I misunderstand something?
That's right. I didn't remember changing anything relevant, but something apparently happened. I atill haven't looked at what the old behavior was.
How close are we to verbally/visually identifying what group a particular bandit or hearth person holds allegiance to?
We'd like to do something with this soon, since it's far too difficult to identify bandits that didn't harass you directly. This release is a bit crowded already, but it shouldn't be too much longer.
What's the reason for removing zombie wrestling? Is it difficulty, or because they were doing weird stuff with it (e.g., joint locks?) The stereotypical zombie, as I've seen them portrayed, congregates in a crowd of grasping arms. The difficulty should already be mitigated by the running and strength nerf.
I didn't like the joint locks etc. I wouldn't have a problem with them holding you down and eating you alive, and we'll get there. The constant charging and tangling together is the substitute for now.
entity_site_link has a int32 undocumented field, the 7th one, that seems to be a flags field, could you detail the meaning of those flags fields or at leat the following ones?
bit 00->(mask 0x001) related to trading
bit 01->(mask 0x002) related to nobility
bit 03->(mask 0x004) related to trading
bit 04->(mask 0x008) related to trading
bit 17->(mask 0x200) related to nobility
bit 18->(mask 0x400) related to nobility
bit 19->(mask 0x800) related to nobility
residence
capital
fortress (used at least by those castles which aren't currently in)
local market (for villages to think about their market town)
trade partner (for markets to think about other markets)
monument (for a civ to know its tomb sites)
primary criminal gang
criminal gang
marked for invasion
land for holding (all regular sites get this if civ has nobles, whether they have a noble or not)
central holding land (only dwarf fortresses get this for now)
land holder residence (the regular sites where a baron etc. actually lives)
pushed out by invasion
marked for reclaim
failed to hold hostile occupation
If you meet an unnamed character identified by a distinctive feature that can be severed (nose, ears, etc), what happens to their descriptive adjective if you lop the identifying part off? Does it pick the next available feature, replace it with "the guy with a missing nose" instead, completely fail to update the identifier, crash, or what? o3o
Yeah, we were hoping to change it on sever, but I haven't messed with the words/raws quite enough to make it clean (e.g. the formation of "one-eyed" or even "noseless" won't be generally possible without new raw strings, and I don't know if I'll have time to go through everything). Right now it gives them an adjective, but if you see them at a later point and the feature is gone/severed, they will get a different applicable adjective. This may or may not be changed prior to the release. The same goes for changes in weight/muscles etc. If you don't get their name, their adjective might change if you see them again.
Does/will pain have any affect short of sudden unconsciousness?
Yeah, people that aren't in a martial trance that have pain above a certain level get all their rolls halved right now. There's still a lot of work to do, and hopefully we can clean up the "I got your toe, so you're ko'd" problem before too much longer.
Will it ever be possible to define custom item specific improvements?
Whatever item component system we come up with will hopefully be flexible, but it's hard to say. It would probably be best to merge a custom item specific improvement system with a component system. It's a road fraught with danger though, item components...
Will there ever be a point in the future where NPCs might seek revenge on their own?
There's some stuff along those lines in the planning -- the hope is that once we fix up the hunt-the-player-I-don't-like mechanic, it'll be able to function generally so the player doesn't have to be involved. The issue standing in the way is just the amount of information that needs to be crunched.
Will we see backup weapons as an option? For example, you could have a squad of marksdwarves that uses crossbows as normal when at a certain range away from the opponent, but uses daggers or short swords if an opponent gets too close or if they run out of ammo.
Hopefully it'll be more interesting over time, but it's hard to say when any particular thing will go in.
1.Will there be a historically documented event in the spirit of "Columbus discovered America?" with the advent of ships. I mean, if some fraction will be able to reach new shores, it will somehow be reflected especially in its history?
2.Will the new phase of world activation include the emergence of professions and medicine into adventure mode?
3.Will you change the generation scheme for cities in the future? For example, similar to latest features, you can add geneartor architectural styles. And the profession of architect, that will include the ability to create tractate describing the new style, to become the city architect, to teach others, and so on (similar to other types of artists)
4.How soon the mechanics of mounts will be expanded? Now we can’t see them otherwise then in sieges.
5. Will there be any differences between the characteristics of animals of the same type?
Such as size distribution or other (interesting) differences (I don’t mean attributes and other stuff that’s already in game). It would be interesting to experience occasional anomalies such as albinism.
6. Will there be any complex cliffs or other landscape features? Today, the maximum that can make erosion - is + - 45 °, which looks like a beam, but not much of a canyon or even a ravine.
7.Will there be the tools for crafting such as a blacksmith hammers, knives for carving, and so on?
8. Our scientists can invent trip hammer and water powered trip hammer. Does it mean that these mechanisms will be ingame soon?
9.Will there be cursed city, that is special for werewolves and for vampires?
10.Will release with magic include some improvements for necromancers? Alchemy and other stuff that can make them stronger.
11.Will there be the religious wars? When one of the cults is especially militarized to destroy the others.
12. Will there be clans of mercenaries: normal soldiers, assassins, hired sales agents, and so on?
13.Will it be fixed when working dwarves throw weapons (axes, pickaxes, crossbows) when they are mobilized into army?
14. Won’t you add revolutions to fortress mode?Like your citizens are divided into two camps and these are fighting among themselves because of some disagreements.
15. Will there be certain game events in certain temples of the gods? I mean festivals in player fortress.
16. Won’t soldiers be able in fortress mode to throw a melee weapon? Like to throw an axe to head of fleeing goblin, and of course, get back the weapon if possible.
As Daniel said, generally it's hard to say exactly when what'll happen etc., so I'll just comment briefly as we go, often with the "dunno when" thing, because it's unavoidable.
1. We have that mountain summit announcement (and those horrible spammy river announcements), so I expect it's possible once boats are used.
2. I have no idea. Adventurer medical stuff is a popular suggestion anyway. Generally for professions, I'm still trying to figure out how I'm going to do tools and all that.
3. We'd like to do it, but a variety of things come up, as usual.
4. It's lurking in the list of nearer term things we'd like to try in adv mode. Dwarves might never ride things, though it seems reasonable that a human diplomat might also be on a horse or something at times.
5. We have been behind on that sort of thing. I think cows still have alligator bites or whatever. It's hard to find time to do smaller variations.
6. We used to have bad cliffs, but they were a victim of not having climbing, if I remember. Now we have climbing, but it's still somewhat difficult in a few ways. We'll get there at some point.
7. This has been a central issue both with us not having adventure crafting and in the background of dwarf mode. We worry somewhat about the clutter and the problem of having to order up too many work items in dwarf mode. And there's also coming up with a good item list without having any background in any of the skills in our own lives. We're bound to screw up over and over, even with everybody helping us out over on the suggestions board.
8. This ties in with the previous question -- I don't expect to get to any particular thing soon, but we'd like to kind of rawify and build up the item/building lists together as we build up the knowledge list to match items that are already in the game until there's harmony there. It's bound to be a lengthy process.
9. I'm not sure what this is about vampire werewolf cursed cities. We have cities occasionally ruled by vampires. I'm not sure what else will happen.
10. This one is even harder to say than the others I'm not sure about. Something is going to happen on the first magic pass, and hopefully it'll be cool, even if it doesn't really involve the necromancers. It might.
11. We had some dev notes about schisms and so forth. It seems like something that should happen.
12. We have the one-person mercenaries now... but they aren't really, because there's no economy so they don't get paid. It stops that sort of thing from going forward, so I wouldn't expect more until we get there, but then it should be easier to think about.
13. Issues with civilian equipment vs. military equipment are popular over on the bug tracker. There are difficulties to getting it worked out in a way that handles the various situations, but we'd like to figure something out.
14. This is up for the embark scenarios release. I'm not sure which sorts will get to or what kinds of things dwarves will be up to, but they'll understand themselves and their place in society a bit better.
15. We were hoping to get the new world gen festivals active in-game but didn't make it. We have those w.g. festivals now though, so they'll make it over sometime. Next chance will probably be religious-themed embarks.
16. Only the player in adv mode throws things now, if I remember. It should be available to everybody... who knows when we'll get to the overall combat additions.
Do animal-men continue to civilize in the background after initial worldgen is complete? If so, would the presence of a player fortress in an otherwise unsettled region speed up this process?
No, it's another unfortunate world-gen only addition at the moment, partially because we haven't gotten around to any of the animal people entity stuff.
I am constantly surprised by the generosity that you have shown. For most of my life I have been a "glass half empty" type of guy, but you people have really changed that. It's clear that you appreciate the way things are going, so we shall double our efforts to earn the support you have given us. Many new tweeks to the UI are coming down the line to make life easier, always with an eye for the future, and for magic!
Thanks for another great month! I'm in the middle of the material/image specification additions, moving on to decoration/encrust jobs to finish the basic mechanic off. Then we'll have to tackle the manager a bit to make the specifications more useful. I'm not sure yet if that'll be it for this release, or if we'll try to squeeze in some more. It depends on how long the current task takes.