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[Qyubey]

     As far as the whole real world mechanics of aging goes, these are the specifics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telomere. Particularly robust telomeres would result in a longer life with visible "aging" beyond one's prime occurring late in the process. You could also theoretically repair them in order to delay the aging process. But more importantly, have you seen the Titans and Forgotten Beats? Many of them aren't even biological in nature. Toady One has modeled certain aspects of the game, such as minerals, so precisely so that he can anchor the game to reality, which helps make the utterly bizarre creatures and systems seem special even within their own reality . It's a means of giving the player an understandable connection to the game world, a frame of reference by which to judge the bizarre.

     Toady has expressed an interest in creating entire multiverses, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiverse, not just singular worlds. This means that you need to throw away all of you preconceived notions and let your imagination run wild when if comes to DF. Flat worlds, cubic worlds and all sorts of other seemingly impossible things are very much on the table. The HFS isn't going to be replaced with just one thing that will be the same in every generated world, and it would be absurd to expect the creatures of any giving world to follow any one paradigm or set of paradigms. ANYTHING is possible no matter how absurd, that's the beauty of magic.

So each creature has a telomere value that acts as a kind of % probability modifier for developing an age-related disease? Full Telomeres as a baby, lose a small, random amount each year; each season roll to see if you develop a disease (and maybe a Telomerase value that can regenerate telomeres each season/year, but also degrades over time). Certain diseases are only possible when Telomere count drops to a certain threshold. I'm pretty okay with that; inorganic things wouldn't have the value and undead could have full telomeres all the time.

I think by 'multiverse' he meant you could interact with other worlds you generate. Like sending a ship over the sea to visit another land, or creating a magic portal. I could imagine making parallel universes by just generating the same world again, but running history calculations again so things turn out differently.

[GoblinCookie]

Considering the upcoming myth arc involves setting parameters for each race upon creation (curse of death, can die to x things) it might be easier than you think to implement an 'old age' parameter during creature creation. Have it randomise a number of years where age really starts to take a toll and an age where the creature dies. Then each individual creature can just have those values slightly randomised, so people can reach their peak at different ages, and live different lengths of time. Death by old age could only occur if the creature possesses the curse of death, but the curse of decrepitness could occur even to immortal beings! However, decrepitness is immune to certain creatures, like those made of metal and special undead like vampires. So when powerful beings feel their time approaching them, they may seek to extend their lives through magic, potions, replacing their mortal body, possessing another, or becoming a true undead.

It is a bit morbid to create things with their expiry date written into the code, but oh well.

EDIT: As for whether or not magical creatures like demons could be immune to decrepitness, I say leave it random. Having a demon seek a new mortal body is a common trope in fantasy, and if Toady does plan to implement proper souls and ghosts, possession of a youthful creature by an old, dead soul would be fantastic to occur. Maybe a demon's cult kidnaps a young child and performs a ritual to transfer the soul of their master into the child so he may live anew!

Also, soul jars to keep those souls handy until you can give them a new, ageless body.

The expiry date is in there in order to save memory.  It is lot easier just to have everything drop dead on a predefined date than to have to constantly calculate whether they died this year for 20k+ characters.

[Qyubey]

Hang on, which IS is easier on memory?

• Every creature has a date they 'die of old age' on. Each day (whats a day in Fortress mode?) it checks every single creature and kills them if they are alive on or after that day.
• Every creature has a set number of 'time units' they possess, which ticks down every time unit (seconds,minutes,days,years,etc). If this reaches 0, they die.

Both of them HAVE to do checks at a certain timeframe and maintain an 'age' value for every single creature. It's just that one is static while the other is constantly changing. So probably the first one? Then age altering effects could push that date forwards and backwards when needed, rather than having it tick down all the time.

[Putnam]

The first one is faster and is what Dwarf Fortress uses. However, Dwarf Fortress also keeps count of the birth tick, so that age may be calculated as well.

Each day (whats a day in Fortress mode?) it checks every single creature and kills them if they are alive on or after that day.

1200 ticks, but DF has death-by-old-age down to the tick.

[Qyubey]

The first one is faster and is what Dwarf Fortress uses. However, Dwarf Fortress also keeps count of the birth tick, so that age may be calculated as well.

Each day (whats a day in Fortress mode?) it checks every single creature and kills them if they are alive on or after that day.

1200 ticks, but DF has death-by-old-age down to the tick.

Mkay (what was this thread about again?), age effects. It should be pretty easy to set in some [when] functions that randomly determine if a creature develops an age-related complication on disease, based on the number of ticks 'remaining', in a sense. I suppose the question now is- should old creatures degrade in skill and competency? I mean, there's plenty of old men in fiction who are hyper-competent and powerful.

[Dirst]

The first one is faster and is what Dwarf Fortress uses. However, Dwarf Fortress also keeps count of the birth tick, so that age may be calculated as well.

Each day (whats a day in Fortress mode?) it checks every single creature and kills them if they are alive on or after that day.

1200 ticks, but DF has death-by-old-age down to the tick.

Mkay (what was this thread about again?), age effects. It should be pretty easy to set in some [when] functions that randomly determine if a creature develops an age-related complication on disease, based on the number of ticks 'remaining', in a sense. I suppose the question now is- should old creatures degrade in skill and competency? I mean, there's plenty of old men in fiction who are hyper-competent and powerful.

Yes, but they're all from the planet Zeist and we don't talk about them.

[Rubik]

The first one is faster and is what Dwarf Fortress uses. However, Dwarf Fortress also keeps count of the birth tick, so that age may be calculated as well.

Each day (whats a day in Fortress mode?) it checks every single creature and kills them if they are alive on or after that day.

1200 ticks, but DF has death-by-old-age down to the tick.

Mkay (what was this thread about again?), age effects. It should be pretty easy to set in some [when] functions that randomly determine if a creature develops an age-related complication on disease, based on the number of ticks 'remaining', in a sense. I suppose the question now is- should old creatures degrade in skill and competency? I mean, there's plenty of old men in fiction who are hyper-competent and powerful.

Of course, but there's also the trope of the retired adventurer that abandoned his life of trouble, willingly or not, because he felt to old to keep fighting gobbos, built a home and got himself a family

People should degrade in various aspects we know associate with aging, such us bonus/nerfs on learning speed of jobs/leveling atributes etc. and more aspects that will be added in the future
That's something we all can agree on, because it adds realism and content to the game
What should be discussed is the most adequate method to do so, preferably a way that connects with the health system(thing again, age-related illnesses)

[Wyrdean]

When an intelligent being gets older it should in some way become wiser so how would we represent that?

[Bumber]

When an intelligent being gets older it should in some way become wiser so how would we represent that?

Training mental skills. Wiseness is not an inherent property of old age.

[Qyubey]

When an intelligent being gets older it should in some way become wiser so how would we represent that?

Just make mental skills the last to go, unless they develop Alzheimers.

[Wyrdean]

When an intelligent being gets older it should in some way become wiser so how would we represent that?

Just make mental skills the last to go, unless they develop Alzheimers.

That would work however, I was (almost) thinking that they should be a good teacher (Age would give a bonus to teaching skill) to younger generations especially if they have had children ( teaching children what to do and how to better pass on wisdom to the next generation) Also maybe a new wisdom skill which intelligent beings gain from completing a task (would have to be slowly earned) the skill could be a slight bonus to most skills. (to offset aging and the loss of bodily strength)

When an intelligent being gets older it should in some way become wiser so how would we represent that?

Training mental skills. Wiseness is not an inherent property of old age.

Id like to think wisdom as more than that as you can be dim yet wise

[Wyrdean]

One of my favorite tales about wisdom:

A Thief's Lesson
Seeing his father, a professional thief, was getting old, the son was worried because he had not learned any trade to make a living for himself.


“Father, I want to learn your trade.”


“All right, I’ll show you.”


One night, the thief took his son to a rich man’s mansion. They dug a hole in the wall and sneaked into the house. Having managed to pry open a closet, the thief bade his son to get into it and take as much valuables as he could. As soon as his son slipped inside, the thief shut the door of the closet and locked it. Then he walked to the lobby and made a fearful noise.


The entire household was awakened. The owner of the house and his servants lit up candles and searched for the burglar in every corner. But the old thief escaped through the hole in the wall, leaving his son behind.


“Why did my father do that?” the son wondered in anger. “How can he run away himself and leave me in the lurch?”


The young man tried desperately to open the closet, but to no avail. Suddenly he had an idea. He started to mimic rats squeaking. Upon hearing the noise, a maid opened the closet. Barely had she unlocked the door when the young man dashed out, knocking down the candle in her hand, and ran away as fast as his legs could carry him.


Raising a hue and cry, the entire family ran after him through the garden. The young man spotted a well. Quickly he picked up a rock and threw it into the well with a loud splash. Unable to see clearly in the darkness, those who were chasing him heard the noise and thought the thief had fallen into the well. They surrounded the well and lit a torch to look down into it. In the chaos the young man escaped through the hole in the wall.


When he returned home, he was mad at his father.


“Tell me how you managed to get away.” his father asked calmly.


Still fuming, the son gave a detailed account of how he managed to escape.


The elder thief beamed with satisfaction. “My boy, you have learned the tricks of the trade!”

[Qyubey]

When an intelligent being gets older it should in some way become wiser so how would we represent that?

Just make mental skills the last to go, unless they develop Alzheimers.

That would work however, I was (almost) thinking that they should be a good teacher (Age would give a bonus to teaching skill) to younger generations especially if they have had children ( teaching children what to do and how to better pass on wisdom to the next generation) Also maybe a new wisdom skill which intelligent beings gain from completing a task (would have to be slowly earned) the skill could be a slight bonus to most skills. (to offset aging and the loss of bodily strength)

You might be over-estimating what effects the wisdom stat has.

[Rubik]

Personally, wisdom shouldn't necessarilly increase with age because a game mechanic
We have real life as a direct example of people being dumb even if they are old.
Wisdom is the result of taking useful information from your experience. Old people have more experience, but they must still extract useful messages from them. Something that doesn't necessarily need to happen
There are more mechanic we need to implement before we have realistic old people giving advice to young adventurers, so don't force it now addying a game mechanic that isn't based on anything in particular

[Deboche]

I can't even imagine how wisdom would work. Would there be a set of life lessons that the character would learn throughout life if they survived them? Would you be able to learn it from books? Try to pass it on to young people who don't listen? And is wisdom something you can define or is it subjective? Would two very wise people agree on every choice to make?

And more importantly, how would it actually show up in the game? Would a very wise person not run towards the megabeast or what?