Bay 12 Games Forum

So there was a lot of good stuff going on in the FotF and probably some of it will be lost/forgotten by the time Toady gets back to this. So, to summarize what other people have already said...

Separate static from changing, e.g. large frame vs. simply fat. (ikkonoisi)

Less infodump, filter by how much it deviates from the average. This is already done to order the descriptions, but it should simply not display any of the 'somewhat' traits. (Fishersalwaysdie, Timst, Granite26, Dante, probably others)

The above should only apply to facial and body features, and not things like hair/skin/eye color, for which there is no average, and body size/build, which is actually important to know. (Exponent, smjjames)

Filter by body part it describes, e.g. all facial features in one paragraph, hair features in another, body features in another, etc. (Warlord255)

Or model it after dating website profiles: height, weight, eye color, hair color, hair length, skin color, and basic body type, and then other weird specific features. (jpwrunyan)

Add a 'capstone' description: ugly, beautiful, deformed, handsome, ill-bred, cute, etc. (Warlord255)

An overall description of the entire fort (overall short/tall, thin/stocky, frail/robust, etc.). (Bunny)

Switch up the sentence structure: "His X is Y,", "His A is X and Y,", "He has Ying X," "His X Ys" (ManaUser)




My own suggestions:

Add temporal descriptors. "Since last fall, he has been fat." "He hit a growth spurt at age 22 and is now somewhat tall." "Since his marriage to Urist, his very long beard is neatly combed." "He keeps his head shaved since the death of his son." It would be cool if these were eventually tied to real events, but for now they'd keep descriptions from being so dry.

Add relational descriptors. "His beard is braided, in the style of the King." "Like his brother, his long hair is tied back in a ponytail." "He has his grandmother's square chin." "His round ochre eyes protrude like a toad's." Again, it'd be only the most neurotic of players that would notice if these descriptions weren't really accurate and for the rest of us, it'd make reading them more fun.

Add cause descriptors. "His earlobes dangle because of a fight he was involved in." "His nose is upturned from having walked into a wall." "His skin is rough from burns he suffered." Again, these would only be flavor for now.

More interesting adjectives for extreme traits: extremely concave/convex -> collapsed/hooked, extremely thin/fat -> stick-like/bloated, etc.

Make adjectives more 'natural'. "can take a punch" instead of "rugged", "can bend steel with his hands" instead of "strong", "a stiff breeze could knock him over" instead of "frail", "shrugs off most injuries" instead of "mighty". Toady already touched on this in response to some of the seeming contradictions in descriptive text and I thought it'd be a neat thing to do on its own.



Discuss. Elaborate. Criticize. Go!

This is a single player game. There is not one skill that can't be increased by grinding long enough. Cheating literally does not matter. By the time a player has leveled a character to the point of godhood, he would have seen pretty much everything the game has to offer. Instead of having to do that every time you start over, you could just get right to fighting the man.

Also since there are no sanity checks on any of the stats, I'd be more worried about somebody giving their liberal a heart of 9000. Or exploiting a buffer overflow to execute arbitrary code--oh wait.

So I tested my commit privileges by doing just that. It seems to work, except a bug that I'm pretty sure isn't my fault: sometimes if a member of the squad is killed and another is injured as the squad e(V)ades combat, the injured member is listed multiple times. Sometimes you wind up with a squad of dead liberals.


P.S. I am a stupid person who does not know how to use -m.

I was leery of adding skills or trying to balance these things properly. I approve of your changes.


I'm on Sourceforge as kuactet.

I'm splitting this off from the FOTF thread. This is the thread for mechanical computers, gates, and contraptions of that sort.

I'd like to keep this implementation-only, so no "It would be cool if..." posts, please. Only actual working devices, with pictures once they become available.

I'll start it off with a possible floodgate-based digital display:

code:

---

......
..11..
.2..3.
.2..3.
..44..
.5..6.
.5..6.
..77..
......
displayed  |      active floodgates:
number:    |  1   2   3   4   5   6   7
  1           X   X       X   X       X
  2               X               X    
  3               X           X        
  4           X               X       X
  5                   X       X       x
  6                   X                
  7               X       X   X   X    
  8                                    
  9                           X        
  0                       X            

---

If, for example, you want to display the number 0110 (6), floodgate 3  needs to be active (invisible). Create a pressure switch that that activates floodgate 3 when depressed. Then,

code:

---

top view:
###############
#......BDDB~~S#
#._.###########
#...#_#_#_#_###
#####.#.#.#.###

---

. clear space
# rock
_ pressure switch
~ water
S source
B bridge
D door

The four pressure switches at the bottom are attached to the binary input. When it reads 0110, both bridges will be lowered, and both doors open, so water can flow and activate the floodgate 3 switch.

You can do all 10 numbers at once (up to 16 from a 4-bit pattern):

code:

---

#############
#0_..BBBB~~S#
#############
#1_..BBBD~~S#
#############
#2_..BBDB~~S#
#############
#3_..BBDD~~S#
#############
#4_..BDBB~~S#
#############
#5_..BDBD~~S#
#############
#6_..BDDB~~S#
#############
#7_..BDDD~~S#
#############
#8_..DBBB~~S#
#############
#9_..DBBD~~S#
#############
####_#_#_#_##
####.#.#.#.##

---

where 1_ is linked to floodgates 1,2,4,5,7  2_ is linked to floodgates 2,6 etc. and the leftmost bit of the input pattern is linked to each left fluid control, etc.

This system can be set up to display anything based on bit patterns, for example a digital timer. Your turn!