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[Scoops Novel]

I've noticed the great waves made in stonesense, and it makes me wonder if combat can ever be rendered. Aside from RNG creatures, there's the small issue of hitboxes, but nevertheless without the constraints of realtime you could go reasonably far right? I like my theatre of the mind very much, but even so it can be difficult to follow a coherent narrative of myself and 20 followers fighting, realistic as that may be.

[Sergarr]

I've noticed the great waves made in stonesense, and it makes me wonder if combat can ever be rendered. Aside from RNG creatures, there's the small issue of hitboxes, but nevertheless without the constraints of realtime you could go reasonably far right? I like my theatre of the mind very much, but even so it can be difficult to follow a coherent narrative of myself and 20 followers fighting, realistic as that may be.

The narrative of combat is going to change greatly in the new version, so please wait until it is ready~

[Scoops Novel]

I've noticed the great waves made in stonesense, and it makes me wonder if combat can ever be rendered. Aside from RNG creatures, there's the small issue of hitboxes, but nevertheless without the constraints of realtime you could go reasonably far right? I like my theatre of the mind very much, but even so it can be difficult to follow a coherent narrative of myself and 20 followers fighting, realistic as that may be.

The narrative of combat is going to change greatly in the new version, so please wait until it is ready~

But from what we know now?

[Agent_Irons]

Yeah, it's possible. With the combat log and the positions of creatures you could reconstruct an animated version.

Hitboxes wouldn't be suuuuper tricky. I imagine you could generate a final shape similar to the way raws are generated. Start with a body_plan and then add/remove body parts to get creatures, then apply relsizes and appropriate grooming choices. It would be a lot of work, though. And rendering combat in a way that made sense would also be super difficult. There can be a lot of things happening at the same time, so you'd need to generate animations for shield blocks, dodges, hits from behind, hits from in front, that can all happen with different weapons at the same time.

It would need to be after-action(or at least on a delay) is my guess, though. Sensibly rendering the dwarf fortress combat system as a three dimensional visualization requires knowledge of the near future so that blocks can be intercepted.

It would be a fun project, but kind of out of my league.

[Dirst]

Yeah, it's possible. With the combat log and the positions of creatures you could reconstruct an animated version.

Hitboxes wouldn't be suuuuper tricky. I imagine you could generate a final shape similar to the way raws are generated. Start with a body_plan and then add/remove body parts to get creatures, then apply relsizes and appropriate grooming choices. It would be a lot of work, though. And rendering combat in a way that made sense would also be super difficult. There can be a lot of things happening at the same time, so you'd need to generate animations for shield blocks, dodges, hits from behind, hits from in front, that can all happen with different weapons at the same time.

It would need to be after-action(or at least on a delay) is my guess, though. Sensibly rendering the dwarf fortress combat system as a three dimensional visualization requires knowledge of the near future so that blocks can be intercepted.

It would be a fun project, but kind of out of my league.

This is the kind of thing that MASSIVE was built to do.  It has slightly higher system requirements than DF, however.

[Putnam]

It really wouldn't be possible due to the wonky way the whole thing works. Tell me how you could animate someone latching onto an enemy's left upper arm and right lower leg with two different teeth while said left upper arm is putting said someone's right lower arm into a lock, for example.

[Scoops Novel]

It really wouldn't be possible due to the wonky way the whole thing works. Tell me how you could animate someone latching onto an enemy's left upper arm and right lower leg with two different teeth while said left upper arm is putting said someone's right lower arm into a lock, for example.

You could just not bother to animate impossible scenarios.

This is the kind of thing that MASSIVE was built to do.  It has slightly higher system requirements than DF, however.

The slightest hope of getting this working with Dwarf Fortress?

[Agent_Irons]

It really wouldn't be possible due to the wonky way the whole thing works. Tell me how you could animate someone latching onto an enemy's left upper arm and right lower leg with two different teeth while said left upper arm is putting said someone's right lower arm into a lock, for example.

Oh I hadn't thought of that. Each body part of (mouth,arms,legs) can latch onto an arbitrary enemy body part, so with arbitrarily flexible combatants you shouldn't get anything topologically impossible. (Someone needs to put [internal] or whatever keeps organs from being wrestled on back teeth at least, that would clear up like 90% of the crazy stuff in combat logs)

[Scoops Novel]

Forgetting about combat, is there anything that stops dwarf fortress from being rendered (not necessarily in real time) in shiny games engines?

[Dirst]

Forgetting about combat, is there anything that stops dwarf fortress from being rendered (not necessarily in real time) in shiny games engines?

There seems to have been attempts at rendering DF scenes (such as this one), but nothing has come close to the general usability of Stonesense.

In principle, a binary plugin could manipulate articulated MOBs in a game engine based on state info pulled from DFHack.  It would be incredibly difficult and probably useless for its intended purpose.  I believe the technical term for that kind of thing is "megaproject"

Edit: typo

[than402]

i shudder to think how an animated DF battle would look.probably gorier than most splatters,certainly nigh impossible to properly code.

[Scoops Novel]

Forgetting about combat, is there anything that stops dwarf fortress from being rendered (not necessarily in real time) in shiny games engines?

There seems to have been attempts at rendering DF scenes (such as this one), but nothing has come close to the general usability of Stonesense.

In principle, a binary plugin could manipulate articulated MOBs in a game engine based on state info pulled from DFHack. It would be incredibly difficult and probably useless for its intended purpose.  I believe the technical term for that kind of thing is "megaproject"

Edit: typo

i shudder to think how an animated DF battle would look.probably gorier than most splatters,certainly nigh impossible to properly code.

Thanks for the link. For the uninitiated, can you explain exactly why? I'm not talking about playing the game through shiny game engines, just rendering it. I understand if you mean impossible for most modders, but we have 20 years .

[than402]

what i meant is pretty much what Putnam said.combat logs are filled with opponents biting improbable spots,parts sailing off to the horizon,and grappling moves that defy regular anatomy.it would be difficult...but since you have far more experience on the subject than me and you say it can be done at least to a degree,i take that back

[Putnam]

Not to mention that all body parts are essentially abstract notions of connections with other parts that have abstract tissue layers and the occasional abstract position compared to another abstract part.

[Scoops Novel]

what i meant is pretty much what Putnam said.combat logs are filled with opponents biting improbable spots,parts sailing off to the horizon,and grappling moves that defy regular anatomy.it would be difficult...but since you have far more experience on the subject than me and you say it can be done at least to a degree,i take that back

I doubt it . Yeah, i admit combat needs to wait a few updates before it can properly handle something like this. I should ask in the stonesense thread why he used what he used.