Bay 12 Games Forum

Quote from: RailroadRider on March 08, 2014, 08:58:27 pm

According to the LOTR wiki, (We use the same dwarfs)

Ha, not even slightly.

Quote from: Quatch

As part of the flying minecart physics, did you decide on a tile size?

Assuming gravity works like real world gravity and you can invent a time unit (obviously not linked to the dwarf mode calendar, which moves too fast for this), then a choice has been made.  It wouldn't make any fewer dragons fit in the tile though.  I think for the purposes of the minecarts it turned out to be 2m x 2m x 3m with 10 clicks / second, but it isn't that important or far-ranging in effect.

I don't understand the beef with time abstraction in fortress mode, are we living in some alternate reality where Populous never existed??  God games always abstract time and action, that's in the definition of the genre.  If stuff doesn't make sense you probably need to approach things from a more Armok/god-like perspective.  How fast dorfs walk and drink and do stuff matters much less than who and what they bludgeon.

I accidentally dug out a tile I didn't want to... AND SAVED

Rainseeker:   Counters! We must have counters.
Toady:   ... counters, that's right, and whatever other furniture decides to come up. So that's going to be the hub of it, and then even if it's just a little counter where someone goes in to check into their inn, like if you wanted to set up something that was more like just a hotel type inn rather than having a big hall with tables and games and booze ... So you'd have this hub where you'd set up your services and link up rooms, it would probably just use regular bedrooms, so we don't have to change it that much for your inn rooms, and link them up to the main meeting all, and at the meeting hall you'd also be able to set up your prices and specifically what things you want going on at your inn, and perhaps you'd also - like with the workshop profiles - be able to attach the particular people you want to hang out there. So basically we wanted to set up the hub in those buildings and not deviate too much from what we've got now. There's obviously going to have to be a new kind of screen or options menu for the new stuff but it should all come right off of that screen. When you get into this economic stuff there's also this desire to jump into, 'I want my guest list with their winnings tab and how many drinks they've bought' and if for some reason you set up two inns you could have charts saying how well they're doing. I don't know how much we want to jump into Theme Park type of stuff, but it's reasonable ... Like, if you decide to start your fortress and you just set up this giant gambling hall and you attach some stockpiles filled with all kinds of stuff that's brought in and it becomes a big part of your fortress and basically booze is your main export straight to people into their stomachs and then they export it out of their bodies when they walk off the map or whatever, and that's your main source of income, then it would be reasonable to have tracking information for that kind of thing. But if it's just a small little place you use to make your diplomats and merchants more happy and more likely to have good trade agreements and that kind of thing then it doesn't need to be something that's in your face all the time. We're certainly not planning to have it at the end of the year pop up your earnings; that's not what we're going for, I don't want to scare people into thinking we're doing something completely off base and stupid with the game.

Quote from: Manveru Taurënér on March 06, 2014, 02:56:54 pm

Quote from: Novel Scoops on March 06, 2014, 02:51:21 pm

What thoughts do you have on making vacant non-dwarf sites reclaimable?

Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_11_transcript.html

I think when it comes to other weird ruins, like the ruins of a human civilization, I don't know if there's ever going to be like a dwarf mode colonization or claiming of that. It's similar to how you can't just settle inside a human town with a dwarf fortress anymore. But I'm not sure, it's certainly not as off limits as that, it would be a kind of legitimate thing. You'll probably more likely find an adventurer making a bandit camp there or something, but if they can do that there's probably no reason why the dwarves can't go to an old human castle and set up a mine underneath it or whatever. That'd be kind of fun.

Haven't tried to do this (and it's probably impossible in the current version), but one thing I thought I might try someday is to have an embark site that overlaps partially with a city site.  A ways outside the city gate, an unassuming outcropping of rock houses a drawbridge and fortifications... which leads to a vast underground Dwarf Fortress.  Meanwhile, the city hums along not-quite-oblivious to your actions.  Then an army comes along to sack the city, forcing the Dwarves to seal up and miss out on caravans until the siege resolves itself (perhaps with some help from the frustrated Dwarves).

When the Army Arc, Caravan Arc, etc. are complete, do you foresee the player's fort getting involved in fights between third parties?  For example, armies crossing the area that are not aiming for your fort, but might end up causing problems anyway?  Caravans from besieged cities not arriving unless you send them an escort party, etc.?

The whole Dwarf Fortress time dilation is always going to be one of these big thorns in the side of the game. It's always going to be a huge problem to deal with. It's not a problem in adventure mode at all because adventure mode is moving at the slowest time possible in the game, so it's not a problem. [But] in dwarf mode we're always going to have to figure out a way to fudge things. If the wars are raging all over the place and, you know, over the course of month someone could sweep through an entire province or something then how does that figure in with the fact that you could maybe get your squad off the screen in a month. It's just sad, it's tragic sad, bad, and it's not going to work very well without all kinds of ... Like when you're playing a fortress it's just going to have to fake a lot of stuff. Not fake it, but just make the armies move slower on the world map too or something. So history is going to have these starts and stops, if you always play one mode you wouldn't notice but if you play between fort mode and then adventure mode and fort mode and adventure mode, there's going to be these strange dynamics going on that are caused by the fort molassesing the universe. It's okay, it's just one of those things ... because you can't go the other way and say 'I want fort mode to take as long as adventure mode' because then you'll never see summer, much less winter, because it would just take way too long for that stuff to happen. Right now [in] adventure mode if you just walk, if you're walking 'click click click'; you're going seventy two times slower than in fortress mode. So you would need to dilate the game seventy two times, which means that if you're used to a fort that lasts four years then you should get used to a fort that lasts one month for that same experience. That's crazy, that's not exactly a ...