Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Jolamar]

How about we make it to where when a creature is really old, they become weaker and get grayer hair.

[Shonai_Dweller]

They get grayer hair already.
It's one way to determine your vampire. It's likely to be the one white haired person in the room.

[Rubik]

How about we make it to where when a creature is really old, they become weaker and get grayer hair.

I think a lot more could be expanded on that. Establishing some proper ageing for all creatures by a raw system would really help adding realism and modders alike
It would affect things general health and aspect, and speed of progression for almost all jobs and atributes
These could be defined easily with a system similar to that of size variation that we already have for growing creatures
It would define different data for every species, such us the rising, peak, and decrising points of vitality and health in each stages of growth, as well as chances of getting oldness-related illnesses
It would definitely make the game harder, even a lot, in some cases, but having 150 year dwarves fight with the same agility and strenght as a 30 year old is, apart from hilarious, really inmersion-breaking
This could also open a lot of possibilities for many aspects of the game, such as creating specific interesting scenarios and motivations, such as an old farmer that, missing his youth's strenght, offers himself as a test subject for an alchemist in search of a magic revitalizer (probably ending horribly), or playing as the family's grandfather in adventure mode, and having to be carried away in the back of your first son because your body isn't as strong as it was before, having an observant role in the party, and letting your family fight off the goblins while you command them

[Putnam]

Or like tissue variations over time that already exist, such as wrinkling and graying hair (which, again, are already in the game).

[Deboche]

It's a nice idea but needs to be approached carefully. Not all creatures age the same way, of course.



So a dwarf could, for example, come of age at 12, be at his peak at 100 and die at roughly 150-70. I don't know what would be ideal.

And also, what you see with athletes is that they tend to keep their raw strength into their 30s and 40s even as their agility goes.

Finally, marathon runners have a really low heart rate and usually have higher longevity. So a lot of factors play into this.

[GoblinCookie]

Or like tissue variations over time that already exist, such as wrinkling and graying hair (which, again, are already in the game).

These are cosmetic changes and there is a reason for that I think.  The problem with old age effects in general as already mentioned in an earlier, ill-fated thread, is that it is not enough to simply add in penalties for old age.  There are a few things that can be added in without incident, cosmetic effects, dying of old age, fertility malusus for instance and there are other things that cannot.

The problem is that the dwarf AI has to be advanced enough to know that it is too old to effectively engage in certain activities.  This ties in rather well with starting scenarios release, dwarves would retire once their old age maluses reach a certain level and would enter into a retired dwarf citizen status that would have it's own defined status in your society, whether for better or worse.  Hence their labours would be restricted at the same time, they know that as retired dwarves they cannot join squads and do heavy duty stuff just as everyone else avoids inappropriate labours for their citizen status. 

[Rubik]

It's a nice idea but needs to be approached carefully. Not all creatures age the same way, of course.



So a dwarf could, for example, come of age at 12, be at his peak at 100 and die at roughly 150-70. I don't know what would be ideal.

And also, what you see with athletes is that they tend to keep their raw strength into their 30s and 40s even as their agility goes.

Finally, marathon runners have a really low heart rate and usually have higher longevity. So a lot of factors play into this.

Exactly, when I talked about modders, what I had in mind were the elves of The witcher, The saga of books from Andrzej Sapkowski (read it if you really want to find an awesome magic system).
In this universe, elves are really long-lived, and they start degrading closely before death, but when they become adults, they become sterile, and so, they cannot reproduce.
This particular flaw, was the one I was thinking off when I wrote the suggestion.
You would be able to govern the statistics of health from your creatures in the raws
In the particular case of this elves, if you were to mod them in-game, apart from their different vitality from that of humans, you would add a probability of [STERILE] upon entering certain age, and with some differences in age, they would all become sterile, affecting gameplay and roleplaying
And If AI ever gets this good, a probably result from this particular effect would be that a rival civilizations end up killing all the elven children completely eliminating their ability to produce offspring

But I'm thinking out loud, what I mean Is that the way to add a versatile and satisfactory aging system would be to rawify their vitality as species, with rises, peaks and declines, and add specifical sindromes or medical conditions to happen in certain times of their life.
Thinking out loud again, this wouldn't need to be used only for showing the decadence of a species.
If you were to get creative with this system, you could make it so that a mithical creature, in the course of their lives, suffer great decline of their health, only to ''become young'' again, some years after, rejuvenating cyclically for all eternity.
You could make a race of humans that, because of an hormonal thing, would become really prone to lewdness shortly after entering the 69 year of their life.
The possibilities are endless, and would add a lot more to the game as a whole in all the mechanics, if this was made good

[Deboche]

The possibilities are endless, and would add a lot more to the game as a whole in all the mechanics, if this was made good

I agree and I imagine something like this will definitely be implemented, given ageing and dying are such key motivations within the game. I'd love to have Gandalfs be possible - old looking wise and knowledgeable person who's physically undiminished.

[Wyrdean]

I only hope that it's flexible enough so that creatures modded to live 500 years instead of 150 would "age" slower.
Don't want to have to redo my raw modifications to account for decreasing strength with age

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Long living dragon dwarfs are cool...

[LordBaal]

I only hope that it's flexible enough so that creatures modded to live 500 years instead of 150 would "age" slower.
Don't want to have to redo my raw modifications to account for decreasing strength with age

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Long living dragon dwarfs are cool...

If such implementation ever gets done, it will certainly be that way, looking for how things like adulthood and gray hair and wrinkles work in the game right now. Most likely tags would be used to determinate whenever a entity would start to become older.

[Wyrdean]

Argg so i'm going have to retype everything!!! 6 or so of my custom species have powers that change over time!! ARRGG!!!

Ah cool thanks well, if it every does get implemented (and I hope it does!) it would be very cool that said, I could no longer laugh at the 165 year old legendary Ax wielder sending Goblin limbs flying.

[Dirst]

Argg so i'm going have to retype everything!!! 6 or so of my custom species have powers that change over time!! ARRGG!!!

Ah cool thanks well, if it every does get implemented (and I hope it does!) it would be very cool that said, I could no longer laugh at the 165 year old legendary Ax wielder sending Goblin limbs flying.

Though said dwarf might be too old to keep up with the daily routines of an active squad, he could still possess a dangerous level of skill to overcome his declining physique.  I'm picturing something like Sean Connery and his deadly left thumb in Presidio.

Edit: found the exact quote.

Lt. Col. Alan Caldwell: Now, are you sure you want to have a fight? Because I'm only gonna use my thumb.
Bully in Bar: Thumb?
Lt. Col. Alan Caldwell: My right thumb. Left one's much too powerful for you.

[Deboche]

Though said dwarf might be too old to keep up with the daily routines of an active squad, he could still possess a dangerous level of skill to overcome his declining physique.  I'm picturing something like Sean Connery and his deadly left thumb in Presidio.

For sure. You can see that in sports to a degree. Olympic sprinters have really short careers because once the physical explosiveness is gone that's it. But in sports that require a lot of skill like boxing, football(soccer) and so on, experience and technical ability can carry a high level career into the athlete's 40s.

[LordBaal]

Yeah, I guess that dwarves could not even age like humans do. Perhaps they don't become significative weaker up right before dying or something.

What I mean is that aging doesn't necessarily affects all races the same.

[Rubik]

Undoubtely, The fun point on this system would be adding variety to the game, and make it more real
Funny enough, I've been thinking exhaustively on how to implement this , because it's something I had never thought about DF, and it's a core mechanic on the whole realism and inmersion arc.
I'm fairly new to the forums, so please bear with me and tell me: Should I start another thread where I put my own suggestion, or Toady might read it even If I post it in this one?
Sorry if I sound weird, English is not my mother tongue