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Author Topic: The good, the bad and the ugly - Feedback thread for 34.xx  (Read 27959 times)

Sphalerite

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Re: The good, the bad and the ugly - Feedback thread for 34.01
« Reply #30 on: February 15, 2012, 03:04:45 pm »

As you said, DF doesn't handle variety well.  The animalpeople tend to crowd out the normal creatures in the available slots for local creature populations.  It wouldn't be so bad if the animalman creatures were rare, for example if you only had a slight chance of seeing one one or two randomly chosen types in a given world, but DF seems to want to put all of them in all the time.  It would also work better if the animal people actually had civilizations and did something other than just being larger, more annoying, non-butcherable versions of the normal animals.

Good in the new release:  The new cities.  Getting dwarves with actual pregenerated history showing up as immigrants.

The bad:  Getting immigrants showing up with their 20 children at your newly settled fortress.

Debatable:  Evil regions are now nearly uninhabitable hellscapes of undeath and poison.  Arguably, evil regions should be horrifying, rather than underwhelming as they were in DF2010.  Would be nice if Good regions were similarly bizarre and distinct from normal areas somehow.
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Neonivek

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Re: The good, the bad and the ugly - Feedback thread for 34.01
« Reply #31 on: February 15, 2012, 03:07:53 pm »

I don't know I still say there is a way to handle all these animalmen in a better way.

I mean what part of having soo many animalmen is the exact problem? Is it because the second you step outside there are like 20 different animalmen of different species?

I will admit my bias is that I actually like the idea of a lot of types of animalmen.

I think I just don't like how specific they are.  Reptile men, snake men etc are fine because those describe large groups of creatures.  But having a humanoid version of every single species gets a little weird.

I will hand that to you

Quote
The problem for me is having some silly animalmen, like the cited damselflyman, and to have many too similar animalmen, for example, rattlesnakeman and adderman, when I was happy with just the serpentman

Interesting.

A solution to many of these, a sloppy lazy solution, that keeps them in would be to group these animalmen so that all the snake-animalmen are called Serpentmen and their specific snake attributes are dependent on which snake they use (Like castes). Looking at them will tell you the exact animal they are based off of but otherwise they will show up as their overall type.

The same can apply with Lizardmen and Insectmen and Spidermen and Birdmen.

Goodness... This reminds me of something...

The ISSUE however is that there are some animals it doesn't work on.

I'll make a suggestion about this. It seems like a workable solution to the vast majority of animalmen.
« Last Edit: February 15, 2012, 03:11:36 pm by Neonivek »
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Reelya

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Re: The good, the bad and the ugly - Feedback thread for 34.01
« Reply #32 on: February 15, 2012, 03:10:04 pm »

Back in one of the older versions of DF I created a script which automatically went through the animal raws and created a procedurally generated animalperson creature and civilization for nearly every animal in the raws.  It was very silly, and I didn't play with that mod because it just got silly seeing so many animalmen showing up.  When I finally start a fortress in the new version, I'll probably mod out most of the animalpeople first.

I don't know I still say there is a way to handle all these animalmen in a better way.

I mean what part of having soo many animalmen is the exact problem? Is it because the second you step outside there are like 20 different animalmen of different species?

I will admit my bias is that I actually like the idea of a lot of types of animalmen.
Maybe we should petition Toady to procedurally generate all or most animal-men on a per-world basis? It could be a world-gen parameter then, like night-creatures, etc.

Trapezohedron

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Re: The good, the bad and the ugly - Feedback thread for 34.01
« Reply #33 on: February 15, 2012, 03:11:37 pm »

Back in one of the older versions of DF I created a script which automatically went through the animal raws and created a procedurally generated animalperson creature and civilization for nearly every animal in the raws.  It was very silly, and I didn't play with that mod because it just got silly seeing so many animalmen showing up.  When I finally start a fortress in the new version, I'll probably mod out most of the animalpeople first.

I don't know I still say there is a way to handle all these animalmen in a better way.

I mean what part of having soo many animalmen is the exact problem? Is it because the second you step outside there are like 20 different animalmen of different species?

I will admit my bias is that I actually like the idea of a lot of types of animalmen.
Maybe we should petition Toady to procedurally generate all or most animal-men on a per-world basis? It could be a world-gen parameter then, like night-creatures, etc.

Or better yet, have him segregate the animalmen in their own raw file, to keep things tidy.
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thvaz

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Re: The good, the bad and the ugly - Feedback thread for 34.01
« Reply #34 on: February 15, 2012, 03:22:14 pm »

I am having fun now just hunting in the outskirts of a town, selling the meat in the market (it is silly to sell it in a cloth shop - merchants should accept just what they trade), and running from the ambushes.
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eataTREE

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Re: The good, the bad and the ugly - Feedback thread for 34.01
« Reply #35 on: February 15, 2012, 03:41:21 pm »

Good: UNDEATH!!

Bad: Without some sort of diminishing returns on undeath, evil biomes are not embarkable. There needs to be some sort of mechanism preventing the same corpses/body parts from returning from the dead over and over and over again.

Ugly: Fortress mode necromancer attacks are underwhelming. Necromancers sneak onto your map much like a kobold might; a more dramatic announced entrance, with the necromancer already commanding an Army of the Dead, would be preferable for me.
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Neonivek

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Re: The good, the bad and the ugly - Feedback thread for 34.01
« Reply #36 on: February 15, 2012, 03:52:00 pm »

Actually I will defend Evil Biomes in one way.

Biomes that are nearly or entirely impossible to embark in isn't a bad thing (Obviously no one would live there)... Except the game should probably warn you against going there and seperate "REALLY tough biomes vs. Nearly impossible biomes"

I wouldn't mind SUPER evil biomes where the undead are many, where they just won't stay down and the rain is poison. Except the game should have some way of conveying the difference.

Also no I am not justifying everything Toady does. Even he does things I don't agree with. It is just that often these things we turn down are secretly good (or even great) ideas done badly. Rather then just outright bad ideas.
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nenjin

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Re: The good, the bad and the ugly - Feedback thread for 34.01
« Reply #37 on: February 15, 2012, 03:55:19 pm »

To me they really should not be crowding out the wildlife. Wildlife populations should make up the bulk of what you're running into out of the cities.
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Neonivek

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Re: The good, the bad and the ugly - Feedback thread for 34.01
« Reply #38 on: February 15, 2012, 03:57:09 pm »

To me they really should not be crowding out the wildlife. Wildlife populations should make up the bulk of what you're running into out of the cities.

It is because of how the can handles variety right now.

It is similar to those mods that add like 20 different civs and 100 different megabeasts where you often don't get ANY of the standard races or megabeasts and when you do they are exiled to a small corner of the map.

The game needs a different way of organising certain creatures. For example "Giant Lions" are more of a monster and shouldn't be very common.

It also needs a way of chosing some creatures but not others. Based on just limiting variety, thematic choices, or what have you. A sort of way to tell the game "Ok this world will have the 5 base animalmen, and 10 minor animalmen... but no others". Set up some as "Always in" and others as "Maybe in" and others as "Never in but kept incase something happens". As well as population.
« Last Edit: February 15, 2012, 04:10:05 pm by Neonivek »
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PeterStrummel

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Re: The good, the bad and the ugly - Feedback thread for 34.01
« Reply #39 on: February 15, 2012, 03:59:22 pm »

There are a lot more children in this version than the last.
E: Probably because whole families come to your fortress at the same time, and most are couples who then proceed to make even more babies.
« Last Edit: February 15, 2012, 04:05:16 pm by PeterStrummel »
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Sphalerite

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Re: The good, the bad and the ugly - Feedback thread for 34.01
« Reply #40 on: February 15, 2012, 04:04:35 pm »

Looking at the creature conversion templates, it looks like the giant and animalperson templates don't change the population settings at all.  This means that the giant and animalperson variants are just as common as the original animal.  The only restriction is that they're supposedly limited to savage biomes.

It would probably be possible to modify the templates such that the frequency and population of the giant and animalperson creatures was vastly less than that of the original animal, to restore some sanity to creature populations.
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werechicken

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Re: The good, the bad and the ugly - Feedback thread for 34.01
« Reply #41 on: February 15, 2012, 04:06:39 pm »

If you're bothered by the sillier animalmen you can always delete their raws, then gen your world.

Good
Evil regions actually feel evil and terrifying now, and I really like the undead especially the fact they keep coming back. I also like the more minor bug fixes like rock crystal and the gem stockpile.

The bad
Worldgen becomes insanely slow after the first 100 years.

The ugly
I really hate the fact that random bits and pieces of animals become zombies. I mean how does the shell of a mussel even move, let alone attack. (although I maintain this is a bug)
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Spish

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Re: The good, the bad and the ugly - Feedback thread for 34.01
« Reply #42 on: February 15, 2012, 04:15:07 pm »

The Good: Adventure mode is infinitely more compelling now. The undead are finally a threat again.

The Bad: Whereas in DF2010 worldgen beasties were unstoppable murder machines, now they are incredibly weak. Somewhere in between would be nice.

The Ugly: Travelling for a week, and then being forced to spend a whole nother week drinking, sleeping, and eating just to get rid of all that goddamn thirst (and resulting hunger); because you can only eat or drink three times in one session, and require at least 5 times that amount to satisfy dehydration. I'm thinking maybe travel mode should handle thirst automatically, because this is ridiculous.
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MaskedMiner

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Re: The good, the bad and the ugly - Feedback thread for 34.01
« Reply #43 on: February 15, 2012, 04:19:37 pm »

Good: All new features. Also creature men actually doing something in history now.

Ugly: Bandits one shotting you with bolts/arrows.
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Cheese

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Re: The good, the bad and the ugly - Feedback thread for 34.01
« Reply #44 on: February 15, 2012, 04:20:57 pm »

Good: Necromancers, undead, towns and catacombs. The world is generally much more interesting.
Bad: While I appreciate the increased challenge over DF2010, adventure mode is a little too hard.
Ugly: Megabeasts, almost all of them, being killed by elves. Elves. The few that survive to the usual Age of Heroes have quite a large list of kills, however, but a 120+ year old dragon that has more than 150 kills shouldn't be dying to a random elf. Unless it isn't a random elf. Legends viewer needs to be updated.
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