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Author Topic: Future of the Fortress  (Read 3715126 times)

Aseaheru

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #3000 on: August 17, 2012, 03:14:16 pm »

that sounds..... like pure win. 8)
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jellsprout

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #3001 on: August 17, 2012, 03:45:04 pm »

if i recall correctly, it would cause some issues toady didn't want to tackle yet, like having surgeondorfs amputating infected stomaches and heads
Simultaneausly, It would also open up the possibility of dwarves made entirely of prosthetics.
"We can rebuild him. We have the technology. We can make him better than he was. Better...stronger...faster."
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misko27

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #3002 on: August 17, 2012, 03:59:36 pm »

if i recall correctly, it would cause some issues toady didn't want to tackle yet, like having surgeondorfs amputating infected stomaches and heads
Simultaneausly, It would also open up the possibility of dwarves made entirely of prosthetics.
"We can rebuild him. We have the technology. We can make him better than he was. Better...stronger...faster."
"Dwarfier"
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Chthonic

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #3003 on: August 17, 2012, 05:29:33 pm »

I don't know about clay.  I think the traditional material for full body prostheses is tin.
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GoombaGeek

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #3004 on: August 17, 2012, 05:53:07 pm »

I don't know about clay.  I think the traditional material for full body prostheses is tin.
I was pressed for time before someone else stole my glorious 3000th reply. And I think someone shattering if you hit them hard enough is pretty funny :P but yeah, unrealistic.
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Askot Bokbondeler

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #3005 on: August 17, 2012, 08:56:30 pm »

it's clay for feet and tin for heads

Phlum

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #3006 on: August 17, 2012, 09:34:10 pm »

Add some copper when forging and it's still as traditional but 20 times as strong.
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EmeraldWind

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #3007 on: August 17, 2012, 10:35:24 pm »

I don't know about clay.  I think the traditional material for full body prostheses is tin.

Nick Chopper FTW, right?[/obscure reference]

I imagine dwarven surgeons with the ability to remove limbs would be quite terrifying.

Anyone else surprised at how different Adventure Mode is going to be in the next version.
I thought that the new travel map we got a couple versions ago and the new cities would make the game vastly different.
But this is a different beast altogether.

I wonder though. With the groups forming on the travel map,
I wonder if mummies and their raised armies will become groups on the map or if they will just go back to bed.
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TheDJ17

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #3008 on: August 17, 2012, 10:50:12 pm »

Wouldn't they stay and protect their treasure? Or has the treasure not been added yet?

I don't play much adventure mode btw :P
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Putnam

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #3009 on: August 18, 2012, 01:05:14 am »

There's treasure alright.

Toady One

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #3010 on: August 18, 2012, 05:09:05 am »

Thanks to Knight Otu, MrWiggles, Rockphed, Neonivek, Cruxador, Footkerchief and Putnam for answering some of the questions not included below, as well as anybody I missed.

Quote
Quote from: tfaal
How are you planning to handle nonlethal combat?:
     *Will there be a hitpoint system in place, or some way for bruises to incapacitate people?
     *How will you deal with the brain-punch problem? (Lower punch force? Higher skull strength?)
     *Will occasionally lethal punches still be possible?
     *How will this affect blunt weapons like maces and warhammers?
Quote from: iceball3
Wouldn't a slight adjustment to the toughness of the skull be somewhat necessary, perhaps a mengis layer or making the skull a little tougher, etc? I've noticed that punching can get a little bit easy to instant kill someone, for something that's considered non lethal (read, taking out two people in two turns, shattered skulls fatal.) Or perhaps higher the threshold for death, such that a bruised brain would more likely cause unconsciousness then death?
Of course, if those are too unfitting, how about the ability to change the amount of strength put into an attack, so one can deal a light punch to the head while dealing full blown punches to the rest of the body?

Hitpoints is not really the correct word, since computers are all numbers and there isn't going to be some number that kills you.  Bruises are already calculated using a few numbers for each wound on a body part's tissue, their severity and area and so on, and that can already cause some trouble for people and their functions.  It's just not good enough.  There'll just be a further reckoning with the systems that have been broken for a while, and everything's still on the table.  I don't think I can fix the skull properly without adding a new parameter to body parts to further account for their geometry, but that might be a fine thing to do.  Punches by very skilled, strong people should still sometimes cause death, since that happens in reality.  I'm not sure how it'll affect blunt weapons, but the goal is to leave them better than I found them.

Quote from: dhokarena56
Since goblin armies moving across the map to attack will be tracked as a replacement for a goblin army just popping up on your doorstep, is this going to scrap the grace period that you have with the goblins for the first year and a half or so? I would imagine that if you're halfway between a goblin fortress and the Mountainhome it is attacking, you'd be attacked even if you were a very young fortress.

I guess I'd tend toward let the dice roll on a player that wanted to plop their fort right down in goblin territory, but it would be easy to preserve the grace period at the same time.

Quote from: DarthBoogalo
Will units be able to block with weapons rather then attack by the next release? And will two units be able to get into a deadlock with their weapons, struggling to either get clear of the attacker or get a strike in himself?
On the note of cool duel-y things like that, would a hero be able to march into a bandit camp and challenge the leader to a one-on-one battle? If the bandits don't just shoot the hero down first anyway.

Do you mean in addition to the parrying they already do?  A defensive stance?  There aren't any deadlocks though we've floated that in the past.  We'll have to see where the reaction moments go.  I haven't done anything with duels.

Quote from: Heph
Will there be claims that dont interfere with each other? Say a Political claim on a city by a warlord and a religious claim by on or another religion? Will factions engage in Site-trades where it is viable say as reparation after ending a long-term war?

Yeah, not all claims interfere -- the claims have lots of parameters, and that's only going to get more interesting.  I haven't thought about any higher order diplomacy yet.  Agreeing on territory is certainly a reasonable thing.

Quote from: MoonLightBird
If I attack someone in town with a non-lethal attack, would the town try to subdue me, or would they just kill me like they do now?

It'll start as a nice non-lethal scuffle.  At least until the animals get involved.  That'll probably turn it into lethal combat until people are more reasonable and animals are more combat-averse.

Quote from: peskyninja
Do you have any plans to add more complex and advanced search options to the site finder? Like searching for an specific kind of ore or stone.

I don't have any specific plans for it.  That information doesn't appear on the readout, and I've always been ambivalent about the amount of information you should be given, as a default, but it wouldn't bother me if there was some sort of world gen setting for more specific readouts.

Quote from: monk12
Does this mean that, in Fort mode, your civilization (or others) could be wiped out during play? Presumably this would affect caravans and such as well.

Does this also apply to megabeast attacks? Which, in particularly crazy worlds, could lead to every civilization being wiped out in play.

Yeah, this'll be a danger, although your parent civ would have to be reasonably pathetic to lose its best fortresses over a few years.  But yeah, especially in megabeast heavy modded worlds, when we get the megabeasts moving around, things could get very bad.  I still haven't activated megabeasts yet, precisely because they need to have some controls.

Quote from: DavionFuxa
Would our character be able to mix different types of attacks together? I would assume we can bash a Goblin in the Head with the Shield while Hacking the Left Lower Leg off with the Battle Axe; but could we also throw the Battle Axe while attacking with the Shield, or try a Wrestling Move with our Leg while doing an Attack?

I still haven't settled on specifically what penalties there should be, but you will be able to do different sorts of actions all at once, with whatever objects, wrestling, etc.

Quote from: Guylock
- Will it be possible for a dead civilization to rebuild it's self aka if a race or kingdom went extinct and you make a adventurer and retire, is it possible to make them become an actual NPC peasant or sum ranked noble (like a king) that will rule over and give orders to the people so they can either rebuild or make a new civilization? (this kind of concept would work well if you gen a world with no civs, great for a Genesis type scenario)
- Will it be possible for a player adventurer to be able to retire anywhere? (tied to the second question which relates to the Genesis type scenario)
- Will it be possible for if say a Hord of demons from underworld or a Forgotten beast were to break free and slaughter your fort; be able to roam the world freely and attack or destroy or take over civs?

I don't understand the first one...  the adventurer rules over the extinct people and they rebuild?

You mean like retiring in the wilderness?  I'm not sure I like just letting you live if you are in a really bad spot.

Any historical monsters would still exist in the fort, and that will mean more and more now.  They won't be inspired to wander around the wilderness outside the fort until the regular megabeasts get their brain upgrade.

Quote from: rhesusmacabre
During play, how often will the game update to account for events occuring in the world?

Dwarf Mode is somewhat removed from the world, so I guess that could be handled seasonally, but in Adventure Mode a significant change in the area you are in might be jarring.

It is a constant process, pretty much, rather than one giant periodic update, and people either do stuff away from the locally loaded area, or, in some cases, they actually perform them step by step in the local area.  When towns are destroyed, for instance, groups of invaders run around the travel level map hitting blocks at a time (and they don't know how to do it locally yet), and it doesn't happen suddenly but can take them some in-game hours to finish.

Quote from: darklord92
Will the inclusion of non lethal combat mean the hammerer and other executioners not be as prone to absolutely flattening criminals who they beat?

There might be incidental changes when the head is changed, but the use of a hammer is still lethal, and it is not their role to hold back.

Quote from: Greendogo
Toady:
1) Will we ever get to see families fleshed out more, such as humans creating noble Houses.

2) If megabeast AI is improved, will we ever get to see things like Giants herding/riding Mammoths and Elephants, or Cyclops herding sheep and cattle (ala the Odyssey)?

The succession stuff which'll go in this time is going to highlight families more, I imagine.

I'm not sure how exactly our megabeast antics will manifest themselves.

Quote from: Comatose
In the DF Talk, you were discussing legacys, both for Adventure and Fortress mode.
Regarding Adventure mode, you wanted to give more options to leave a creative/constructive legacy behind. Many of the ideas that the Podcast was throwing around were reliant on the current "activating worldgen in gameplay" that you are currently programming.

Where are constructive Adventurer tasks on your list of priorities?

I imagine positive adventurer actions as things like site creation (Houses, Camps, Shops), and leading adventure mode entities (bandit groups, roving bands of monster hunters, paladins of a god, etc.)

With adventurer entites becoming an increacing possibility;
Will there be more in-depth NPC interactions and conversations?

During the podcast, you also mentioned more interesting seiges and raids from gobbos.
In long, protracted seiges can we expect to see goblins building shelters, and receiving food and materials from their point of origin?

They are on the main list but I don't have a timeline.  I imagine the possibilities with NPCs are just going to slowly increase over time.  Goblins don't need food, but I'm still hoping to do supply lines in general, since they control so much about tactical decision making.

Quote from: Shinotsa
Will the system of large worldgen battles being concluded as a series of one on one duels be touched upon this update? If not, do you see it as being necessary in this set of world persistence updates, or will it wait until external military actions by the player are possible?

I haven't changed it, and I don't think it is necessary for this time.  As long as we leave world gen with the world intact we are good for this time.

Quote from: hermes
Re: The June 15th devlog, this entry seems to indicate that at least in the heat of battle, personal qualities, motivations and emotional reactions are going to have more of an effect.  Now that you're tackling group movements in more detail and at all scales, will these get the same treatment as you go along, or will you add them in at a later date?

I'm not sure what you mean -- the decisions of the group leaders?  Group movements during the heat of battle?  It's still kind of everybody for themselves once combat finally strikes.

Quote from: Chagen46
Toady, when you can send your armies out and watch them, can you also manage the fort at the same time or can you only do one thing (either watch the battle or manage the fort) at a time?

It is likely the battles will need to be resolved in some sort of frozen time before you return to your fort.  It might be possible to have both areas loaded simultaneously, but I imagine that would both be slow and a mess of bugs.

Quote from: Techhead
Given the Gods' more active state in recent releases (with curses and such), what are your plans for adventurers concerning conversations with their deity of choice? Even if it is something as simple as an occasional "Leave me alone, mortal, I have more urgent matters to attend to."

I have no idea what'll end up happening.  Most of the time they don't seem to talk to anybody, and if we follow the world gen example, it'll just be to say something mean before they turn you into a night creature.

Quote from: Greiger
Does two handedness of a crossbow(or any ranged weapon) have any effect on the rolls when being fired, like it does with melee weapons?  It only matters for mods since vanilla crossbows are apperantly always used as one handed weapons, but when I tried to ?science? it myself my results came up really inconclusive.

Yeah, although the two-handed stuff is unsatisfactory as we all know...  But the code I'm looking at says that if the ranged weapon is two-handed for the body size of the wielder, and they experience a "two handed failure" (by not having a free grasp on top of the main grasp holding the weapon), then the hit roll is halved.

Quote from: Neonivek
Toady how are you going to marry creatures who have incredibly fast and sudden strikes but cannot do it often (Like snakes) and ones who can attack often?

For example a snake

There are pre- and post-strike time periods.  I haven't altered snakes yet, but that's the sort of thing we'll be able to do.  A snake could be allowed to strike within 2 clicks for example, but take 10 or more to recover, or whatever makes sense.

Quote from: Japa
Toady, with all this talk about bandits eventually destroying towns while you watch, will invaders be able to destroy our fortress walls eventually?

Whether or not invaders can dig is one of the big topics of conversation that comes up.  I lean toward having them be able to do it, since sieges are technically pointless without that ability, with the option to turn it off for people that want to do what they want.

Quote from: Vherid
Will we be able to adorn our forts with bodies impaled on spikes, etc?

I haven't changed anything there.

Quote from: Spish
Will we ever be able to arrest tantruming dwarves again? Personally, I don't like seeing civilians go unpunished for crippling craftsdwarves and destroying furniture.

Are those crimes not reported by witnesses?  I don't remember where that is at.  The intention is not to decriminalize those acts, in any case.

Quote from: Auning
How do the new attack phases effect the analysis of how square/easy the hit will be, etc., since circumstances may change in the time between the execution of the strike and the following through of it? I.E; You aim an attack at a goblin's lower body and it is shown to be very square. This may change to just square, or maybe even a direct hit opportunity by the time the strike lands.

When will the multiple layer thick trees be added? I recall you mentioning this as it may be required for elven sites (if I my memory is correct). Will this be applied to other things, such as all trees? Will trees be made to extend over one z level?

The squareness hasn't been changed at this point.  You get the shot you ask for if it isn't deflected entirely.  I think it might be too confusing if that information were rendered meaningless all the time.

No idea when the trees are going in.  Priority increases as we want the elf sites.

Quote from: Aerval
When Goblins or anybody else attack a town, will normal peasants start locking their doors and/or even built barricades to stop the goblins from plunder their part of the city? Especially locked doors would interest me, since you can currently go in every house as you want.

It's not something that happens right now.  It's reasonable for people to protect their lives and stuff, I just haven't gotten started on that kind of thing.

Quote
Quote from: kaypy
Do tents have any differentiating features or are they just something like cloth-block hovels at this stage?
Quote from: Heph
How are tents handled? Are the just some sort of 1tile building akin to a bed or do the consist from Multiple parts like walls ceilings etc made from cloth (and supports/poles). Would it possible to set up a "cloth wall" in Dwarf mode?
Quote from: CaptainArchmage
Do tents provide protection from bogeymen at night?

They are pretty much cloth-block hovels, but they are displayed differently.  I haven't embarked on having some kind of giant "tent" item that can turn into many tiles, since I'd need to figure out a construction tile rewrite first.  It doesn't store them as a physical building, but they do get a zone.  The current ones can be quite large for the leader.  I haven't added cloth walls (curtains?) to dwarf mode.

Tents count as inside, unless I screwed up.

Quote
Quote from: CaptainArchmage
Will we have armies "just passing through" our fortress in the coming release?
Quote from: dhokarena56
Are refugees going to show up at our fortress demanding shelter if there are wars in the vicinity?

These things will start happening when we get to taverns, since I have to tackles some multi-racial fort issues before stuff'll work right.  At least that's the current idea.

Quote from: Cobbler89
Will we see the armies on the travel map?

If you can see them, yeah.  Right now you can see everything, but I'm going to hide some of the smaller groups, especially when they aren't nearby or in the open.  The "in the open" part might be a little too messy to take on now.  Forests and especially elevation add annoyances I'm not sure I want to tackle now.

Quote from: misko27
Will the refugees from failed forts make camp? I ask because I recently noticed that the dwarves who abandon do not, as I assumed, scatter in all directions, but actually form a group.

I think it dissolves that group after one save/load, maybe, and stuffs them in a town.  I haven't dealt with the overall game advancement problem -- like when you start a new fort, and it would normally shoot you to spring of the next year.  But now there are armies doing specific things everywhere.  Still an ongoing concern.

Quote
Quote from: Phlum
Ok so a fort is made at the border of another factions land, they make a claim on your site. (a player made fort is a site, right) and destroy you with an army, will you be able to reclaim that fort, will it become a part of that entity, will individuals live at your now dwarfless fort.

Basically, how will forts be affected, if at all, by site claiming?
Quote from: MrWiggles
More broadly are player created Sites under the normal rules for Site Claiming? So lets say you lose a fort through Not Invasion, and you spend a year or two in adventure mode. Will the Site be up for grabs like normal?

I haven't gotten to the repopulation stuff (it is on the plate for this time).  Once I have that, and I have real armies attacking your fort (also o the plate), then yeah, your fort might not be available as a peaceful reclaim.  If repopulation works, then technically there should be people moving to your fort, but they wouldn't understand what to do there since it doesn't fit the usual parameters.  There aren't even usual parameters until we get the other racial sites in.

Player-created sites should be under the regular rules -- if things don't get finished there will be limitations.  If you leave a site fallow and run around in adv mode for a long time, your site will be fair for critters -- whether or not it gets snatched up by random people probably depends on how much we do with dwarf sites.  If humans aren't interested in moving into dwarf sites (player or not), then nothing'll happen if we don't have dwarf sites.

Quote from: Owlbread
Characters that are among the first of their kind will often say "I have no family to speak of" when asked in adventure mode. Will the creation of these characters be explained in the future? Could we see procedurally generated creation myths, and how would that impact on gameplay?

Yeah, procedural creation myths are definitely in the cards, along with the overall metaphysics of how the various worlds and gods work and so on.  We're looking forward to it and have almost jumped in a few times over the years, but so far it hasn't happened.  I imagine at first it'll just flesh out the religions and so on, but we have those plans for the afterlife and all that, and it all relates.

Quote from: Knight Otu
Do multiple eyes, eyes in the back of your head, flexible eye stalks, and the like work with this system?

That doesn't currently do anything, but the way the arcs work, it is very easy to adjust the angles.  Not sure exactly when I'll connect it up but it'll happen.  I suppose a lot of the critters with animals just on the side of their head (like...  most of them?) should get their giant arcs.  But maybe most of it should be given the peripheral rating to make it playable.

Quote from: bombzero
Toady, does ambusher actually have any effect other then speed improvement with this new update? can it protect you from being spotted?

have you considered attempting to nerf some of the major grinding options in adventure mode?

It helps with avoiding being spotted in the peripheral vision area and helps you move silently.

I have some vague ideas about holding off the value of grinding, but it's a little dangerous -- there should be a skill cap on how much you can learn in a given skill in a day, before your brain rebels, realistically, for example, but you don't want that to interfere with the game.

Quote from: CLA
Is the display of enemy field of vision, sounds and alert status dependent on your sneak and/or perception skill?
I think it would be great if there'd be some sort of fairly inaccurate "base information" about the enemy FoV and alert status, but if you'd get more and more precise information if your perception skill was higher. For example only show the status (searching, alert, normal or whatever) and a short direction indicator as default, but with a high perception skill you see the range and how long the guards will stay alert.
EDIT: same for sound obviously.
Will there be a way to toggle sound perception? Say, it's only visible in sneaking mode or in listen-carefully-mode?

The display doesn't depend on your skill.  I guess it could, but I'm not sure if I like it or not.  It depends on how annoying it is when all the info is turned off.

Sound perception isn't toggleable right now.  It was the only thing happening outside of your field of view, so it didn't matter, but now that you can detect things as well, it might matter.

Quote from: Dae
To what extent are sounds going to expanded ? Will there be some things like a way to hear to stomping of a dragon in a cave ? I'm thinking of minotaurs' labyrinth too, where there is a basic placeholder for the beast's voice echoing through the corridors.

You can already hear animals stomping around wherever, as long as they are close enough.  The labyrinth is kind of the highlight of how bad the current system is, because the passages should probably distort the apparent direction of sounds, but it should tell you where talking is coming from in general, including stuff like out-of-sight market chatter.

Quote from: Auning
How will the new sneaking system work with companions? Hopefully we won't have our companions lumbering through the camp while we are trying to stealth. How will this be handled? Perhaps a placeholder "Wait here." kind of system, or will they somehow stealth as well?

How will sound be further applied in adventure mode, if at all, besides the army camps and other infiltration situations in the future? What specific attributes/skills will tie in with all of this?

I think you'll probably just tell them to wait for now, until they can taught to be helpful.

Sounds are applied everywhere.  You'll see them when you are being chased around by anybody, or just when you are walking through town.  I don't think I've linked it to any atts or skills yet.  It could just use situational awareness to give you the softest sounds perhaps.

Quote from: CLA
Will there be an action available for adventurers to cut through tents?

Will this update see sneaking related quests? Such as sneaking into an army camp of a besieged city to kill their leader/general or poison rations?

We've considered tent cutting, and it could still happen.  Not in yet.

It might be that there are fewer quests altogether, but more ways to sneak to get things done.  I'm not sure you're going to specifically be told to do things related to the army conflicts.  Although you'll have to be guided to which decisions are currently meaningful, I suppose.  We're still thinking about where we want to be by the release.
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Toady One

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #3011 on: August 18, 2012, 05:09:32 am »

Quote
Quote from: Maxmurder
Will the new stealth mechanics carry over to dwarf mode?
Quote from: thvaz
Does the changes in sneaking apply to fortress mode?
Quote from: dhokarena56
Are your Fortress Mode soldiers going to engage in something of the same sort of expanded sneaking ability, even if it's not quite as expanded as the Adventure Mode version?

I haven't done anything with the vision arcs or sound.  It's difficult to get the directional stuff in, since there would be a lot more calculations than there are in adventure mode.  It might be enough to just run a quick direction check with a dot product or something, but I'm not sure how much that change would matter since you can't see the sneakers to begin with, so you wouldn't see what's going on.

Quote from: Maxmurder
With the new combat reactions, will we see multiple parts being hit with a single strike?

I have an image in my head of an elefant stomping on a dwarf, crushing every single bone in his body with one blow.

I haven't done anything with multi-part hits.  The full combat arc is still off in the future.

Quote from: Mephansteras
Is the stealth/detection system going to take into account vantage points eventually? One of the reasons Watchtowers are so common in real life is that it is much easier to spot people from above than it is on the ground. But right now in DF they're useless for spotting sneaking people because it puts the guards too far away to detect anyone.

I'd like that kind of thing to matter.  I don't have a lot of room to move with extending my vision arcs though, so it's hard in adventure mode.  Right now a watch tower would help you see around trees, so technically I guess they could be helpful in adventure mode.  For dwarves, yeah, it's all proximity-based, but it's harder to do directions in adventure mode, and without directions there's nothing but proximity to work with (without vastly complicating things).  I guess it could wing it and just add a bonus, but it would be nice to find an actual fix.

Quote from: Phlum
will this sneaking update include fixes for the current ability to steal from anyone but shopkeepers? Or allow you to shoplift some berries without the entire world knowing.

It had nothing to do with that.  I still have to pick that stuff up later.

Quote
Quote from: Spish
Will the alert system apply to any other sites that are inhabited by armies? Like, say, a conquered player fortress?
Quote from: Phlum
When an alert is given, the offended entity doesn't yet know of the offence, right? In other words, is it possible to kill a guard before he alerts others and not become enemy of a civ?

Player fortresses that have been conquered haven't been shifted over to the new system of occupation, because player fortresses are still not attacked by actual armies (though we're playing to snag that soon).

The cascading nature of alert information is still a work in progress, but yeah, there are going to be different levels of information passed along to the entity depending on when you kill the guard.  Even after the alert is raised, until the guard gives a report, I don't think your information will be passed along -- ideally, even after the report, they'd just have your appearance, but it's still tricky to store that as a properly abstracted chunk of information.

Quote from: thvaz
Why did the commander fled instead of fighting?

That particular commander, if I remember, was a poor civilian drafted out of the evil fortress to fill the post.  When that is dealt with, you'll have to beat them up a little more.

Quote from: hermes
Will there be an element of in game learning required for the annotation of the track marks, or will the player be told what every track belongs to all the time?

Your tracking skill is going to determine a lot of the information you receive.  Even a zero tracking person will be able to see a gigantic footprint.

Quote from: BradUffner
Will the footprints be dynamic at all? For example, if the creature lost a toe, will that effect the footprint on screen?

I haven't done anything like that.  The picture is part of the problem, but it's more of a memory issue.

Quote from: Auning
Will there be groups searching for other historical figures and such? For example, a small army trying to hunt down a dragon that attacked a village of their kingdom. When artifacts are in play and the exploration mechanics are in, will there be armies/hired mercenaries searching for wherever they believe an artifact to be, and wandering bands of explorers searching uncharted lands? What about lone wanderers and the like?

Less this time, but yeah, the hope is to have everybody moving around.  The only concern running counter to this is the coherence of your adventure -- if the rug is constantly pulled out from underneath you, it probably wouldn't be fun to play.  I think it'll be fine as long as that is kept in mind.

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Quote from: TheDJ17
Will adventurers/roving bands/entire armies be able to hide their tracks or at the very least try to?
Quote from: Quatch
Can tracks be cleaned up? or deliberately stamped over so much as to make interpretation impossible? or interacted with in any way other than observation?
Quote from: monk12
What ways will you be able to disguise your trails? If I anger a town and get everyone after me, I'd like to know I can lay some false trails and sneak off to a nearby cave to wait out the heat..

How long does pursuit last? Will posses follow you into cities/towns/castles/other sites?  It's a fairly standard fantasy trope to follow the guy who murdered your village across the world to exact vengeance, dramatically arriving at the guy's award ceremony to accuse him of his misdeeds. And one of my favorite bits from the Wheel of Time books involved leading a group of enemy orc-equivalents into the Cursed City of Doomy Doom to try and evade them.

I haven't done anything with cleaning -- I'd considered it briefly, but the way things work now, you'd just make more tracks immediately.  Perhaps if there is a single isolated track you left somewhere it would make sense, but if you're just stomping through sand or snow it doesn't seem like you can do much about it.  I don't know very much about this though.  Deliberate tramping around will still leave you with a short path from the start of your tramp to the end, since you are doing a loop-erased walk or something like that.  At least if the critter reading your tracks can tell down to the second which track came first (which they currently can).  I'm starting up on the evasion section now.  Part of that will probably just be making them more stupid.  I don't intend to leave the evasion section until you can evade a bit.  Using streams is my only big idea now though.  If you do manage to isolate a track that points away from what direction you are going on an otherwise trackless surface, the trackers will follow it and go the wrong way.

How long pursuit lasts depends on who is pursuing you.  A posse from a camp might chase you quite far from their camp, whereas a night creature always wants to make it back to their lair by dawn.  They follow you wherever right now, which is strange.

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Quote from: CLA
Will tracks have varying visibility/clarity (visually represented by added noise in the composite images for example)? Will it depend on your skill? On the underground the tracks are on?

Will we, then have a greater chance of not being tracked if we walk over ground that doesn't leave tracks, go through rivers to wash away scent, etc? Will the AI use that, too?

Will the track images be hardcoded?
Quote from: Putnam
So how are [the tracks] designed in-file, then? Will modders have to create footprints for their creatures manually?

I haven't done anything with track clarity yet, other than leaving some room and a flag for it.  Locally there are tracks underground, but there's not travel down there yet.

If you walk over ground that doesn't leave tracks, keep to rivers etc., you could only be tracked by the sensers and the smellers perhaps.  The trackers use specific tracks, and if you don't leave it they can't use it.  I haven't taught the AI to dodge tracks.

I have not fully taken the plunge on images, but they wouldn't be hardcoded.  It'd be a separate file, like colors, that you'd just link to creature bps.

Quote from: Askot Bokbondeler
titan tracks? boogeymen?

Everything corporeal that isn't flying leaves local tracks now, even if they shouldn't.  If they travel on the travel map, they leave tracks there too.

Quote from: O11O1
Toady, what do tracks look like in local view? Are they title-invisible or something like a * as suggested earlier?

When you turn them on, right now, they have a green background.  Your/companion tracks are black, others are yellow.  BPs like feet are !, vegetation signs are ", items like shoes are one of the square brackets.

Quote from: Cruxador
Also, will footprints respect foot equipment? At least to the extent of checking if there is any or none.

Yeah.

Quote from: Quatch
With the new skills coming, and the increasing relevance of the existing skills, will the number of points available in 'demi-god' increase to make that moniker meaningful?

There's a point at which having even more points to stuff into raw combat skills seems overboard.  We are starting to need more points, but they might need categories, or a new-fangled overall system as we've talked about in the past.

Quote from: eux0r
-how does leaving tracks incorporate things like different types of underground/soil and surface area of feet?
(what will happen here in the future?)

-do you have any thoughts/plans for things like muddy soil/swampy ground to have effects apart from tracking?
(e.g. slowing movement or even completely sinking in)

I have no idea about the surface area of feet and stuff.  It makes sense that a creature with large feet and a low mass in tough soil might not leave tracks at all, but I haven't delved into it.

Overall, there has to be some reason to travel on roads.  Right now they are meaningless.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage
Is the tracking skill going to be the one already in the game, or is it going to be changed to be like literacy, so its a skill without a level? I'd prefer it if one could level up in the skill.

It's a skill with a level, yeah.  It impacts the rate of spotting tracks, and the amount of information you can derive from them.

Quote from: CaptainArchmage
In the last few Dwarf Fortress talks, we've heard about alternate dimensions, and the next set of night creatures. We've also heard a lot about things that used to be in Dwarf Fortress but were taken out before the original release, such as elves animating trees, and animals needing to eat. How much room do you think there will be in the hero arc for adding in the new night creatures? When we get dwarves with ambitions (it seems like there are already goals in place for entities in the game now), I assume we'll have dwarves who want to run their own tavern, or arrange their own furniture, or rob the bank. Does Dwarf Fortress have a means to make abstract structures or cause and effect relationships made by the players identifiable to NPCs? The problem is that you might have a bank vault behind two sets of steel doors controlled by levers and on timers (i.e. the lever does not open the door, but when pulled, it turns on a pump that will flood a tank, and when the tank reaches a certain level, a pressure plate will be triggered, opening the doors, after a certain number of ticks), and the dwarf would need a means to identify the cause-and-effect chain up to and beyond "this lever opens this door".

We're trying to hold off from adding more night creatures for the time being, since it's time to get through some of the more core features.  There are clearly still going to be "content" sidetracks, but I'm happy that we're working overall toward our goals for this time.  I didn't quite get the second part.  Having critters understand complicated lever connection has always been a pathing problem we've avoided and continue to avoid, since it isn't easy.

Quote from: Cruxador
On another note, will stealth (or perhaps some other skill) reduce the tracks left? What about more active forms of tracker-thwarting like doubling back or walking in the river?

And finally, Is tracking information generated in worldgen as well as play? If so, how do they differ? And how abstracted is tracking info generation when the player isn't around to see? I imagine that always counts as army movement and uses that system?

Yeah, I'm not sure if the stealth skills will be broken up, but whatever we end up with might lead to fewer tracks in certain situations, like being more careful with vegetation.  Snow/sand/etc. are still trouble though, no matter what, I think.  Rivers should work naturally.  Doubling back would only work now if they can't just the age of the tracks.

There is no information generated in world gen -- it's all so short-lived right now it wouldn't matter.  Tracking info is held by direction and creator for 16 tile segments or so for moving armies, and it realizes the tracks based on that when you actually visit.

Quote from: Alu
How long will tracking information stay active? Is it Adventure-Mode-Only?

They seem to stick around for a day or two, with the current memory settings.  It's only used in adventure mode right now.

Quote from: rhesusmacabre
Is it possible to follow tracks through cities?

A bit suggestiony but it seems relevant:
Have you put any future consideration into using dogs or other animals to aid in tracking?

Obviously companion animals aren't in Adventure Mode yet, but it seems like a logical step when they are.

Tracks can be left in the city mud, but I still need to handle travel through roadways on the travel map and how those tracks are realized.  Once there is street traffic, it'll likely be a much more proper mess, but it isn't that way now.

Smell is confusing, since there's knowing that something is, say, a mile upwind from you, or sniffing nose down along a scent trail.  I'm not sure what's going to happen with scent trails.  I haven't tracked smell like that yet.

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Quote from: Bohandas
One of the recent updates said that all non-flying corporeal creatures would break vegetation as they walk. Does that include elves and other creatures with "GRASSTRAMPLE:0"? And will that tag be modified in the new update?
Quote from: Cruxador
Will the eventual fae creatures get special tracking stuff? It's fairly common for them to be described as not disturbing vegetation with their passing, and some don't leave tracks at all. Meanwhile in America there are old stories of creatures who have backwards feet and thus leave backwards prints, and the Devil is said to leave goat prints even in the form of a man.

GRASSTRAMPLE is one of those things I've noted down for dealing with -- some of the zero creatures should still leave tracks, and some of them are more magical and so up for consideration.  There's the matter of mud vs. broken vegetation, etc.  Something will happen, but I'm not sure what.  All the magical tracking stuff sounds cool and I'm sure we'll see some interesting stuff as it comes up.

Quote from: Mechanoid
How smart do you expect NPCs to become under certain situations, like finding a pool of blood and enough scuff marks on the ground that indicates a fight happened? Will they raise the alarm appropriately if they're competent or putt around oblivious to the nearby danger if they're stupid enough?

They certainly aren't very bright right now.  People love hiding bodies though, so I suspect you'll have to do that before long, and it'll have to matter.

Quote from: Cruxador
Do bogeymen still appear the old way, random and untrackable? Considering their nature, it would be kind of cool if they did. But I don't know if they're included in "night creatures"; they're not usually referred to as such but I guess they could be.

Yeah, they work the same way.  They are technically night creatures, but the main ones we've got running around now are werewolves and the spouse-converting trolls/hags/etc.

Quote from: Dae
Toady, when you mentionned "lots of critters moving around", does it involve wolf packs ? Are they just packs roaming aimlessly, or do they have some sort of territory, or a central place where cubs are born ?
I could envision a trapper adventurer job, where you track wolves back to their main "camp" to get wolf cubs that you could raise as a pet...

I still have to work through the regular animals, since I can't track them all (there are just too many).  It has to sort of fade them in and out of existence while respecting the overall population and the consistency of the tracks they leave (so that you can follow them).

Quote from: Auning
We know that we will be able to run into and track bandits, patrols, creatures and night creatures, but what else will be included in this? What about demons and other notable beasts that "Began wandering X area"? Will only goblins be assaulting cities and towns, or will demons, megabeasts, and titans be laying siege to them/harassing them? Will they all be included in the initial release?

If you have a character with 4 arms, how would dual wielding bows work with the new combat? Would you be able to fire both at the same time? What would the hit penalty be like/how would it be calculated?

I'm not sure exactly what we are going to get to -- the big ones are currently being held back because I'm not sure I can keep them alive properly easily.

I doubt it would assign a penalty.  Everything's still in flux, but yeah, you get to do your many attacks.

Quote from: Rockphed
What stands in the way of dark towers, mountain homes, and forest retreats being reintroduced to the game?  With goblin ambushers being trackable, I would like to be able to track a goblin party home to exact revenge upon their families.

For forest retreats it's doing large trees, for mountain homes it's just the amount of work.  Dark towers or whatever goblins end up for their various settlements are the easiest to do.  We may or may not see those this time around, depending on how things go.

Quote from: Valtam
Could it be possible for goblins and HFS consequences to roam freely around the countryside after toppling a player fortress, and then subsequently slaughter and conquer neighboring sites, claiming them as their own? Or is this behavior only expected (to a limited extent) from bandits and wildlife usually generated in adventure mode?

I envision it as a chain of events that affect the world in a larger and more inmediate scale, so that our own faults leading to the demise of a fortress also reach other places, changing the political (or at least the demographical) landscape. I also wonder that if we're able to track those forces of evil, then we could have a chance of exacting revenge upon them, or at least die trying, without those critters just dissapearing in a few months.

They'll have to go somewhere!  Armies will move to your fortress, and then they have to move out or stay.  All of the historical figures that are involved won't disappear, though they might scatter if they end up joining different armies/towers/etc. as events progress.

Quote from: thvaz
Do creatures with these new interactions use them for tracking?

Could a blind creature use this "sense blood" smell sense to hunt, therefore making the "Extravision" tag redundant?

Yeah, that's the reason I put the new interactions in there, so that they can track using their detection, though it won't matter for now if a vampire isn't tracking you (which would only happen on a fluke).

Extravision also lets critters know where obstacles and whatever else in the universe is, though it probably never actually uses the tag for that.  I'm not sure how much additional information I need to split out to get rid of extravision.  Sensing is likely the equivalent of extravision now for all intents and purposes, if you can sense absolutely everything (rather than just stuff with blood).  I don't really know what the proper solution is for blob-like creatures, since it's not only about other creatures in the end.

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Quote from: Dae
So now groups can track you down and attack you, which is great. But do groups specifically attack the player or other groups as well ? Will merchant caravans be bothered by night creatures, wolf packs and bandit raids in the next release ?
Also, you spoke of real ambushes but are they now real ambushes, i.e. bandits not really into tracking people but setting camp around a portion of a much used road to demand a toll or just attack everyone going through, effectively claiming a portion of that road as an aggressive force ?
Quote from: CaptainArchmage
With the tracking in will it be possible for in-game caravans to be tracked by bandits? If so, does that mean we might get a caravan in fortress mode followed by a wave of bandits?

Caravans aren't on the road yet, but yeah, this'll make life troubling for them.  The bandits don't set up road tolls at this point.  It's certainly a fair thing for them to do, but it won't matter until there are people on the roads, or the adventurer is given an incentive to use roads.

Quote from: Dae
Are goblin camps in raided sites dismantled after a while ? If yes, how long ? If no, do all goblins stay there or do they leave an occupation force ?
Do goblins take child prisonners from raids (I have a feeling I already asked this one) ?
What is the criteria for goblins to attack a site ? Do they have to be at war with it (since they're conveniently at war with everone) ? Or is declaring war after world-gen already in ?

I haven't gotten to more-peaceful-than-total-destruction occupations yet, so it doesn't really handle the long term meaning of the camp yet.  I imagine they won't need to stay long if they are raiding or destroying...  perhaps just long enough for you to get word and follow their signs, in terms of the game.  But once we have occupation, the raiders won't need to stay unrealistically long.  Occupations are definately going in this time, along with various prisoner issues, since it'll be fun to adventure around those sorts of antics.  These can be post-world-gen wars.  There aren't separate snatcher squads yet.

Quote from: Dae
I'm also surprised no modder has already jumped in with lots of questions. I'll ask mine :
What is the syntax for that creature-class sense in the raws ? Are the symbol and color used modifiable ? Is that symbol displayed even when you fully see the unit ? Is it toggleable ?

For a regular creatures, it is currently [SENSE_CREATURE_CLASS:<class>:<tile>:<3 color numbers>].
For a syndrome, it is currently [CE_SENSE_CREATURE_CLASS:<standard syndrome effect tokens>:CLASS:<class>:<tile>:<3 color numbers>].
The symbol is not visible when you can see the unit.

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Quote from: Helgoland
With the simulation aspects of the game, like economy, trade, warfare etc currently being flashed out, are there any plans on simulating ecological systems?

Say you have a certain density of cave moss in an area, some dralthas and some GCS's. Ecologic simulation basically refers to Draltha population rising and cave moss density declining, slowly leading to a Malthusian catastrophy (or at least a slow decline in Draltha population), while GCS's and Dralthas have a similar relationship. Would probably need information on food chains, lifespans and reproduction rates.
Quote from: Novel
When will Ecologys become more fleshed out, particularly with certain life dominating an area? Let's take the example of Ungoliants children in the hobbit. They dominated that forest, and were a major threat, but you don't see such equivalents of dominant animals in dwarf fortress. Aside from that, the effects of foreign and magical species into an ecosystem, the resulting famine, plenty, or death and trapped abandonment upon nearby civilizations, even development of certain animals into intelligent species with the right magical stimuli. More individual animals would also be great, with runts of the litter and outcasts as well as pack hierarchy, something which should definitely be in when you can tame creatures in adventure mode.

Yeah, I need more information in the raws.  It's the kind of thing I'd be into, probably more than people would want me to add it, but I've avoided it thus far.  There are more than a thousand regions in the average world, with a bunch of pops in each, and that could get pretty expensive if we try to simulate things rather than holding them in assumed equilibrium.
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Knight Otu

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #3012 on: August 18, 2012, 06:11:11 am »

Thanks, Toady!  :)
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Cruxador

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #3013 on: August 18, 2012, 06:28:08 am »

Thanks for the answers! It'll be fun to see where a lot of this stuff ends up going.
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Naryar

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #3014 on: August 18, 2012, 07:37:52 am »

Cool stuff. I just hope time passing by outside your fort for a whole world won't ruin FPS.
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