Bay 12 Games Forum

There are a few statements from people I read again and again, as well as a few facts of DF, and they seem to fit together well into a comparatively easy to implement feature, with far reaching implications: Adding a roguelike mode, or in DF terms an "arcade adventurer mode" or "adventurer challenge mode" somewhere in between adventurer mode and Arena Mode.
I obviously am not too knowledgable about the code base of DF, and I have no experience with programming roguelikes, but to a causal observer, it seems like it's a doable project considering the existing features of DF.


Anyway:
People love DF for a lot of unique features, but looking at it from a roguelike perspective, DF has a few things that make it different from most roguelikes:
the depth of the movement/combat/wound/personality system, solid procedural generation systems for a lot of different environments, and ease of adding new creatures, armor materials and so on.
On the other hand, it's not very convenient to play DF like a roguelike: You need to generate a world, make an adventurer, and then spend the rest of your weekend finding a dungeon to begin with. Endlessly travelling the world map, stopping every five minutes to eat and drink. Finally you find it just to get lost in it and most likely never encounter interesting creatures to battle.

Personally, I love those simulation-y aspects of DF, and they're the reason I keep coming back and am invested deeper than with any other game. But sometimes you just want to do some dungeon crawling. And why use some other roguelike when DF already has all the elements you need, just not assembled in the right combination?



So my suggestion is as follows:

Add new roguelike mode:

- generates a small, simple (compared to DF worlds) dungeon
- uses existing procedural generation algorithms to create several levels in a fixed order (for example: village with small keep >> sewers >> catacombs >> labyrinth >> caverns >> hell)
- fills it with stronger and stronger random monsters and increasingly better loot
- Uses the same character creation as adventurer mode
- permadeath


The question, of course is, how and when this could be implemented and whether adding a new mode (which doesn't need to be hooked up with other modes) is really as trivial as it seems. Even then I assume "trivial" would still be something like a year of development time, which is hard to justify for an entirely new mode at this point in development.

Still, maybe adventure mode moved away quite a bit from the vision it was at one point; having your adventurer check out your own fortress and relive it's history. With adventurer mode and fortress mode growing together more and more (which IMO is the best thing that can happen to DF), there's more and more of a gap left that a "roguelike mode" could fill. Especially serving as both introduction (learning the mechanics without having to worry about navigating the world of DF), as well as challenge for experienced players, it could improve two weaknesses of DF: tutorial and endgame.

So, I'm in the process of expanding the World Activities page on the wiki and I'm not very sure on a lot of things.
This thread is intended to gather that information.

Essentially, I need a list of what is and what isn't "activated", i.e. what happens after worldgen finished - during play (fortress/adventurer mode) without the player having to act.


You can see what I gathered up until now on the wiki page, as well as the talk page. The latter also includes dates of devlogs which mention these features. Some things mentioned in the devlogs between 34.11 and 40.01 didn't make it in the actual release (composite images of footprints for example), so I wanted to make extra sure.

Specifically, I want to know if the following events are happening:

• are new sites being created after worldgen finished? What about army camps at least? On that note, is that bug fixed where armies would remain in these forever?
• Festivals are only a worldgen thing for now, right?
• And knowledge, bookwriting, composing, etc happens even after worldgen, correct?
• Does the structure of sites change? i.e. bandits leaving ruins behind? I never observed this.
• regarding site ownership, is there anything the devlog mentions which conversely doesn't actually happen?
• are the caravans actually travelling the world, or are they still teleported? Are they even historical figures, or created on the spot?
• migrants are all historical figures, right? Are the first two waves still hardcoded, or are they taken from the historical figure pool as well?

Anything else you have to add or can confirm would be greatly appreciated. Compiling other things that don't happen yet, possibly contrary to popular belief would be great as well.

Thanks!

I propose to separate the default init values (init.txt, d_init.txt, maybe even announcements.txt) and default raws from user changes
Either by hardcoding fallback values and accepting missing entries in init/d_init.txt and raws, or by having a separate file called user_init.txt and a folder user_raws or whatever.

If a user only wants to change the popcap to 50, he shouldn't deal with the entire init file, but instead create a new, empty text file and add the line [POPCAP:50].
If someone made a mode that only changes the color of puddingstone in the raws, he would only distribute an inorganic_stone_mineral.txt file containing nothing but the entry for puddingstone.
Just deleting the file would revert it back to default.

Depending on the above variants DF would check on startup for user_<d_>init.txt entries or missing values in <d_>init.txt, and fall back to known defaults.
Ideally, you would get a message on startup if something's wrong (file 'mytileset.txt' in data/init/user_init.txt|[FULLFONT] not found: using default; missing ']' in data/init/user_init.txt|line 23: using default)
Same for raws.


In practice, this would have several advantages:

• It's easier to maintain for modders and graphic set creators
• It's easier to keep an overview for average users, and impossible to fuck up
• It's a lot easier for users and modders to migrate settings and small mods to new versions of DF (the introduction of new values won't generate any issues - as it happened recently with the strict popcap and something else I forgot)

As an seasoned vanilla user for example, you would just keep a tiny init.txt that just contains [INTRO:NO] and nothing else. You could just copy it over to a new DF version without any problems.
On the other hand, a graphic set creator might distribute a init.txt that just contains his tileset path, and [GRAPHIC:YES] without having to worry about newly added values. Changing tiles in the raws would make it less of a maintainance nightmare with raw changes.
It would also be easier to keep an overview over changes to d_init.txt (trunks, tracks, etc) without having to check filechanges every new version. Especially for additions Toady forgot to mention.


Of course the possible values/raws should still be documented somewhere, even if you deleted/changed the files. Not sure what the best way for that would be.

As the title says, it would be convenient if you can tell your manager to order the production of Uniforms you specified in the military screen.
So, for example, you create a uniform that consists of a full set of steel armor, some mail and a red cloak plus a battle axe. You call it "steel axe". Go to your manager screen and order 10 "steel axe" uniforms to be made. This will create jobs for 10 full sets of steel armor, mail red cloaks, and battle axes.
It would also help with managing clothing for civilians, since you could define a "civilian uniform" not assigned to any squad.
I guess uniform options like "individual choice/melee" and so on would have to be ignored.

I'm posting this suggestion for someone else.


You could also extend this to all kinds of user defined "combined goods" in general. In that case it should probably all go in a subscreen of the manager screen.
One case would be making a pump stack:
First you Define "screw pump" as job that orders a block, an enormous corkscew and a pipe section to be made.
Then you define "pumpstack unit" as job that orders a screw pump and two doors (as per the standard pumpstack with service area design on the wiki).

I noticed that the sidebar section 'Pet attributes' of the creature pages still shows "Exotic - cannot be tamed", which changed with the animal training overhaul in 34.06.
As the "animal trainer", "exotic pet", and even some of the creature pages themselves write in paragraphs, the [PET_EXOTIC] tag just means it takes a bit longer.

Do we just remove the entire "Exotic - cannot be tamed" line? Or replace it with "Exotic - takes more time to tame"?
I'd already have done it, but I don't know how to batch edit with regex or whatever the most convenient way to do this is.

The information on the wiki wasn't quite clear on that, and forum search turned up nothing. My own experience isn't sufficiently certain enough, so I figured I'd ask here:


Do smoothed/constructed floors prevent trees from growing - even if there's water from time to time on these tiles?
In particular, will a sewer system with smoothed floors suffer from tree clogging?

What about paved roads for sewer floors? Will that work?
Will paved roads on the surface allow for tree regrowth if the whole map gets flooded temporarily?

Alright, so I'm currently working on the last few ASCII creatures for my Graphic Set (see signature), and I'm having trouble with visualizing some of the creatures.


Namely, I have no idea what a Pond grabber, a Grimeling, and a Sea Monster are supposed to look like.
I mean, I can gather what features the pond grabber and the Sea Monster have, but how are they attached to what kind of body? And I'm totally lost as to what to do with the Grimeling.
Others have a pretty sketchy description as well, but for the most part I can sort of imagine something. Just for clarification, though:

-The Draltha is something like a "underground Giraffe" that has a physical appearance similar to a sauropod, right?
-Drunian looks like a dog with the head of a man.
-Crundles have one pair of horns.
-A Manera is basically a head with 4 arms

A crayon drawing, a discussion thread like there is for the Beak dog, your own artistic rendition or just an opinion as to what features would you help identify the creatures would all be very helpful.
Thanks!

Here are some examples of what I have:


Gorlak, cave blob/flesh ball
Rutherer (not final), Giant Earth Worm

More images are in the thread linked in the signature, if you're curious.


Also, before you ask, an explanation for the style:
I prefer the simplicity and consistency of ASCII-like tilesets and there were no creature graphics that fit that look.
My creature graphics use the letters they get assigned by the game as base (usually) and add distinctive features of the creatures to make it easier to identify them. They only have one color - the one the letter uses by default.