Bay 12 Games Forum

Title.
We all know what can happen on April 1st.

Toady releases the new DF release (with the only actual difference being the version number)?
Working on new features? Which are actually just plans for the future.
ThreeToe posting a new story? You get the point.

Lord knows what plans Toady and ThreeToe have for tomorrow...

While not really important, could be interesting.

The new maximum size of a site (17x17), If I read correctly, is equal to a pocket world's size.
So we can potentially end up with worlds that are made up entirely by one city.

Must...Resist...References.

Alright, so I've decided to do a little bit of wandering around and gave my humans wings + [FLIER] tag.
At first it kind of worked, I could fly (although only up to a certain height, unless I found a higher vantage point of sorts), but now I can't - that said, when carefully moving off edges it does say my character is flying - he doesn't fall down, but I can't move in that state, only via careful moving.

What do?
I want to explore my world in a more epic way, but I apparently can't for some ungodly reason within like 30 seconds.

EDIT: Oddly, now I can, and could fly up even higher than before.
What, is flying dependent on wind or something? Does DF push it that far?

EDIT2: Also, sometimes when I'm high up in the air (or not that high, sometimes), I can see those pitch black solid impassable walls of God-knows-what that block movement from below and from the sides - could it be what was limiting me in one of the earlier areas?
On a side note, strangling an owl mid-air that falls down and bleeds to death is truly an epic kill.

So after seeing the very familiar-looking Ultima Ratio Regum, the very first thing that struck me about it was its really nicely-done ASCII tileset (and colorations) and I thought "Hey, wouldn't it be cool if Dwarf Fortress looked like that, too?".
I wanted to make such a tileset myself, but I apparently lack any kind of skills necessary to pull it off successfully, despite having it basically served on a silver plate. And I had basically no idea how to figure out the colors to look like those used in URR.

So I stand here, asking you guys to "port" Ultima Ratio Regum's tileset to Dwarf Fortress (which is very much possible).
Optional change of colors is welcome, too.


I HAVE GOTTEN PERMISSION FROM URR'S DEVELOPER, AND ANYONE WILLING TO MAKE IT HAPPEN IS ALSO GRANTED SUCH RIGHT.

Title.
If the game so complex came out in the golden age of gaming (*assuming that was the time*), would it have a greater impact on the gaming industry? (at this point it's a pun)

Let's just assume that PC from that era could run it somewhat reliably, k?

No, not AIRplanes.
Planes, as in - dimensions, worlds, planets.

Right now, all generated worlds are completely independent and can't be interacted with each other - which seems right in the current state of things, as there isn't any logical way for those to interact right now.

However, it is becoming more and more obvious (or not) that at one point, those worlds should be able to have some sort of actual connections with each other.

Might and Magic (1986-2002, not this Dark Messiah and Heroes V-VI bull****) series did it very well - the characters could use spaceships built by the Ancients, a powerful race of space travelers (in M&M, there were both flat and spherical worlds - the flat ones were called ). There were also portals.

I am NOT saying we should use this concept in DF, because there isn't such form of technology.
But WHAT should dwarves and other creatures use to travel between worlds? Magic? Technology (of some strange sort)? Alchemy?


...
So let's just assume that we agreed upon a world-traveling method and now we're using it.
When this happens, your adventurer (if in adventurer mode) or a pack of dwarves (if in dwarf fortress mode) are "removed" from the given world and "saved" in-between them (you could say they're stuck in a limbo). Then the game saves and player has to generate a new world like one would normally do. Only that when it's done, the player (or his squad of dwarves) is flinged into the freshly generated world - somewhere at random. At sea? Over a volcano? In a dark fortress? Or maybe just at a local Mountainhome (or whatever could be left of it, should it be ruined somehow). The game then proceeds as normal (well, kind of, since in Fort mode there wouldn't be an embark screen - your dwarves would be left with what they took, unless we're aiming for a spaceship-travel and there's stuff in it.)

Let's face the possibilities - multi-world civilizations, using worlds as garbage dumps (hippies included), re-civilizing empty worlds, extraterrestrial invasions - FUN is to be had with that!

So, in my Automatons thread I mentioned capturing of souls to make the aforementioned automatons work via means of auxillarite crystals.
I would like to expand upon that concept here.

When a creature is killed, its soul will be released and ascend to...Armok knows where (which is funny, all things considered) and may come back to this world as already in-game ghosts. Certain creatures (notably clowns) have a voracious appetite for souls, and will "eat" them (this may have various effects, but generally speaking it will increase their power).

Souls posses any skills that a creature they belang to learned, but this only applies to non-physical skills and attributes (so strength, agility, toughness, endurance etc.-related stuff is lost, since that is body-related and body-exclusive), should they be able to make use of them again.

Souls will try to escape the mortal plane, but may still haunt their bodies (or what was left of them, should there be any remains) for a short time (~half a day, Adventurer mode-wise)

Souls can also be forced to stay on the mortal plane by the use of mysterious crystals known as Auxillarite. Those precious gems come in two varieties, Blue and Red and are affected by item qualities, which determines their "capacity".

Blue auxillarite crystals are rarer than Red auxillarite crystals, but souls that are captured inside them can be released and potentially even given new bodies, should anything happen to the previous one.
Red auxillarite crystals are a more common variety, but any soul captured within can't be released, but instead will be continually transformed into a magical energy that can be used to...Many fun things, like magic, powering automata, feed your soul eaters and whatnot. The skills, and later stats, of a soul will be slowly drained ("experience" in a given skill/stat will start to decrease until it reaches 0) until all of them will "expire" and the soul will vanish, leaving an empty crystal.

Souls have different power based on their soul skills and attributes - this is where crystals' size comes in - while all crystals can hold any (1) soul, the crystal might shatter when a powerful soul is placed in a low-quality/weak crystal.

Crystals can be cut, which will increase their quality, thus making it possible to store better souls within safely.

Both varieties can also be found in the Circus, in fair amounts. Beware of any residents that might not necessarily enjoy their stuff being stolen.


In order to capture a soul (in Adv. mode, at least), get a crystal (how you're supposed to do that in Adventurer mode until labor skills are in is beyond me, but whatever), and find a (fresh-ish) corpse, or place of otherwise death. Via advanced interaction, you will be able to select a soul, much like when necromancing, but only one at a time. (souls will be essentially ghosts in that sense they're unharmable, bodiless creatures)
After a fitting announcement, the "=Red/Blue auxillarite crystal=" will turn into "=Charged red/blue auxillarite crystal=" and its description (or even contents for that matter) will show you information about a soul being captured, and you will be able to view its skills/stats/stuff.


I hope I explained it the best I can. The concept can be expanded upon a big deal, and we all want DF to be as diverse and epic as it can get.