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Author Topic: Future of the Fortress  (Read 2838147 times)

Toady One

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #1515 on: February 01, 2019, 11:15:52 pm »

Quote from: Hapchazzard
EDIT: Since the latest development update mentioned upcoming work on villain hideouts, I thought I'd ask some pertinent questions first:

1. I don't imagine it makes sense for bandit forts to have fine granite walls, barring edge scenarios. Will palisades and other such ramshackle fortifications possibly be making an appearance, and see utilization at other types of sites, too? (villages, minor forts, watchtowers, etc)
2. Are there plans for the possibility of 'overlapping sites' - for example, a bandit hideout at the mouth of a cave or the entry levels of a ruin, cities built atop the remains of much older settlements, etc. in the somewhat foreseeable future? Is this something that the update will try and tackle, or is it far too difficult in scope to shoehorn into the update?
3. Was there some specific reason for castles being removed in the first place? (perhaps someone that's been around here longer than me might also have the answer to that question)
4. What kind of size variety do you anticipate for castles?
5. Similarly, do you have any ballparks as to how frequent you want castles to be in a typical human civilization? Having just 3-4 castles in an average civilization would seem a bit odd, seeing as generic-western-fantasy-kingdoms tend to be littered with castles, and this applies to real-life countries, too (those that built them, at least).

Now, my myth & magic questions:

1. Will there be some kind of sanity system beyond the current strange moods, eventually?
2. Are there plans to make 'forbidden knowledge' a thing? As in, knowledge that has an inherent mental effect on anyone who discovers it and doesn't have a strong enough willpower to resist it's effects. Knowledge not meant for mortal minds causing mental degradation, despair, existential dread, unnatural obsessions, etc. is a fairly common trope in fantasy. If this is in the cards, do you have any ideas on how it would be determined what snippets of knowledge are significant enough to warrant mental effects?
3. Speaking of strange moods - what is the long-term plan for them? Will the eventually be scrapped with an entirely different system?
4. Will the player somehow be conveyed the mundaneness of the magic their character is seeing? i.e. being conveyed that the fireball spell the enemy mage is using is very common and run-of-the-mill, versus it being some extremely strange, novel spell that they've never even thought to be possible up until now?
5. Will NPCs be able to react in various ways to magic, depending on their own experience and knowledge of the arcane arts? I can see something like this being especially interesting in low-magic worlds. Stuff like:
-Peasants/townfolk that have never seen magic crowding around someone doing sorcery in public in fascination, or alternatively running away in terror
-Being able to prove your magical capabilities to skeptical individuals, with a wide range of reactions depending on the skeptics' personality
-Authority figures receiving rumors of powerful enough (again, depending on the level of magic in the world) mages, and potentially sending emissaries to offer employment

1. I can't promise they'll be making their way beyond the bandits and mercenaries this time, but yeah, the tall fine stone walls of the towns will not be what the bandit forts are working with.
2. This is a hard problem and will require at least the map rewrite planned for some point during the myth/magic releases.  Maybe even more will be needed.  Certainly these kinds of sites are highly interesting, and it would be nice to mix all sorts of architectures from time periods along with various natural features, like practically every real-world location does.  But there are a lot of systems/generation/structures that need to be respected in DF, and it stops layering from being straightforward.
3. Something to do with food and also how the dwarf nobles got changed?  It was so long ago I don't remember.
4. It isn't currently a factor; it has no way of judging the difference, so they remain kind of half-assed, as before.  This might not remain the case once I get to adv mode, but we'll see.
5. All of our numbers are lower than real-world counterparts.  However, between the castles in every market town, the mead halls, and the ones built outside towns/village (which can become reasonably dense, a few tiles distant from each other so it doesn't look silly, but you can get quite a few), it's as many castles and other defensive structures as you might want for the populations and population centers at play.  This is discounting border forts, long walls etc. -- they still really don't understand their spatial relation to adversarial civilizations, or their vulnerable points on the map.

1. There is already in terms of the long-term memories and stress and how that manifests.  I'm aware of e.g. Lovecraft-style sanity-check games and so forth, and there's supposed to be a certain supernatural aspect to what's going on there; we'll have to think about how that'd be different from the regular extreme stresses we have now.  Dunno if we'll end up doing something with that.  Various spell effects related to the matter are also on the table.  (There's additionally the matter of improving the general mental illness model, since it's not particularly reflective of reality.)
2. This is related to the above; we'd need to model it, but given the number of 'corruption' mechanics already in mentioned in the prototype, I imagine this will be the case.  Technically speaking, the necromancers currently in the game already work this way; the secret to immortality turns them into zombie-raising loners bent on killing the living and writing lots of books about their tower.
3. This is unclear; there's a certain legacy aspect to it, but there's also going to be a divergence at some point between what counts as "vanilla default-slider generated world" and "vanilla editor example world", and stuff will shake out one way or the other.  We'd like to keep a lot of the now-iconic matter (plump helmets!) intact somehow, and it's a question what kind of raw objects will feed into the generator and which will live in stock editor world land.  The final setup could end up so easily mix-and-match that it becomes a moot point.
4/5. Exposition will not be easy, but the goal is to paint the broad strokes as you are starting your first game (and subsequent games probably.)  This will help a bit, so that if you understand that "fire wizards" are everywhere, then it won't have to explain how common every fire effect is as they come.  This will need a lot of refinement though.  This ties in to the reaction of non-player characters/civilians/etc. to the magic, and that'll be an exposition tool for us as well.  It'll be important for observable-and-rare/forbidden magic to affect bystanders and cause reactions among the position-holders etc.  We're hoping for all of this.

Quote from: Real_bang
With bandits receiving bandit forts and bugs being fixed will we be able to finally complete quests on destroying bandit camps? Same goes to criminals in town catacombs

therahedwig: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7919671#msg7919671
FantasticDorf: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7919712#msg7919712
Shonai_Dweller: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7919859#msg7919859
Untrustedlife: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7919996#msg7919996

Yeah, anything to do with this is a bug, and likely not fixed yet if ongoing.  As I go through adv mode, that might change as I'm testing forts etc.

Quote from: therahedwig
Do you think we'll see adventure mode jails to go with our villains and the interrogation of them? Like, I can understand there's just too little to do the full range of crime and punishment, but I am currently having a vision of bringing a villain to a law enforcer, and then the law enforcer go 'cool, yes we were looking for this guy' and then lets the villain go because law enforcer is an adventure mode npc who doesn't know what to do with law breakers.

Goblins are the only ones with decent enough dungeons right now.  We've been discussing this a bit, handling the humans and non-player forts better
(elves ethics/laws more interested in exile and consumption it seems.)  The code for caging/chaining people already exists (see fort mode), so certain difficulties are managed, others would need help.  The alternative is a violent end to all investigations, which is non-ideal.

Quote from: Aid
Sorry for my English, it's hard to be a Dwarf Fortress fan who knows English badly,
and so my questions are:
1.1 Will in the game, pantheon of the gods united from the very beginning of the generation of the world, or united by the faith of people?
1.2. Will the gods place where they are most of the time, such as the Ancient Greek in Olympia?
1.3. Can the gods have a relationship and can they have children?
1.4. May be the main gods in their pantheon of gods, for example Zeus in Olympus, may be villains plans for the power struggle?
1.5 Can there be wars between the pantheons. Will people come to war for their faith, on the contrary, God will enter into a war for those who believe in him, this will give a little balance because demons in goblins can kill a hundred for the battle?
2. You will test all updates with a magical release?
3. Is it possible to do something like gladiatorial battles to death, or just for training. Or to make a different type in different worlds or kingdoms as a tournament every 5 years and with the reward for determining the best warrior, and in the other is generated so that once a year, random creatures in the worl are battling to death, here's a lot to come up with the release of magical releases. Especially if they could have been an adventurer
I hope someone understands my Google Translate

Eric Blank: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7920328#msg7920328

1.1-5.  Eric's correct about these, but if these are myth/magic arc questions, then these are possibilities we've considered, yeah, and the prototype already has, say, gods having children, gods having 'homes', gods manifesting, and so forth.  It will be a lot more interesting than it is now.

2. Yeah, as Eric says, we test the release as best we can.  The bug tracker attests to the (non-)efficacy of this, but it would be much, much worse without what we currently catch.

3. Arenas etc. have been on the table for various releases over the years (including this one), but they generally don't get selected for various reasons (economy, status, audience coordination, etc.)  Realized festivals/competitions have similar issues.  We'll continue to consider them.

Quote from: Immortal-D
In the Jan. 24 Dev log, you mentioned a lot of bug fixing.  Have you found and/or fixed anything related to the Stress system?  Is there anything we can do to help with that issue?  Like making specific scenario test forts and uploading them.  I thought of this again because my current Fort had a Dwarf with maximum happiness (DFHack cheat) become depressed in a single tick after viewing a pool of Horrid Sludge.

therahedwig: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7920336#msg7920336

As therahedwig says, this wasn't bug fixes for old stuff, just the new ones I introduced at the time.  Stress fixes will come before the Big Wait.  We'll see about before this release; feels tighter and tighter as we go, naturally.  But it'll happen.  What you describe sounds like a simple bug that would work with a tracker save and report if it isn't already up, depending on how the happiness value was changed -- the system has become complicated, so the hack would have to hit a lot of info to really clean a dwarf up.  I assume it does, but I have no idea.

Quote from: Nopenope
Do social skills (other than Pacifier, Consoler, Judge of Intent) have any gameplay effect in fortress mode?

(for what it's worth, the wiki states that it is unclear what they actually do)

Are "giant sleeping monsters that are so massive they act as map features", or severed body parts thereof ("The left eye of Thatakeus" or whatever) on the table for the myth and magic release?

Are you worried about the general activity slowdown in the forums and wiki? How would you explain that despite the community shrinking in size, donations have gone up?

Eric Blank: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7920328#msg7920328
Nopenope (op): http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7920330#msg7920330
therahedwig: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7920336#msg7920336

Currently in fortress mode, they all impact conversation rolls in groups.  The conversation 'tasks' are console, haggle, discuss request, calm venter, and cover for gaff.  These tasks impact tree demands, trade agreement % values, haggling, whether you can cover if you screw up and offer the elves something wrong, etc, and the skill rolls matter.  Regardless of the skill name, "consoler" isn't the only skill used to console somebody.  Here are the lists:

Console: console, persuasion, negotiation, lying, conversation, comedy, flattery
Haggle: persuasion, negotiation, lying, intimidation, judge intent, comedy, flattery
Discuss Request: persuasion, negotiation, lying, intimidation, judge intent, flattery
Calm Venter: persuasion, negotiation, lying, intimidation, judge intent, comedy, flattery, pacify
Cover for Gaff: persuasion, negotiation, lying, comedy, flattery, pacify

I'm not sure if any of the existing skills are missing there, but that's the list.  Some of those should have modifiers (obviously, 'console' should matter more for consoling than flattery), but that isn't the case right now.  And as you can see, persuasion, negotiation, lying, and flattery are the best skills to max out, as it stands.  I'll change this at some point.  Looking at it now makes me want to change it today, heh.  If I do, it'll just be some percentage modifiers.  Yeah, count on that.  But still, the general skills (like "persuasion" and "lying") will be usable in all situations.  Expect console to matter more for console and pacify to matter more for calm venter at the very least for next time; there should also be personality effects from the target, but I'll hold off on that.

Massive map feature monsters are probably more likely than multi-tile creatures for the magic release (assuming a map rewrite), as they are a completely different object that can follow new and easy rules (whereas multi-tile creatures are a nightmare.)  The myths already have severed bits of deities and mythical creatures becoming various stuff in the prototype; if they stay around and chill awhile, I wouldn't be surprised, especially if I don't have to do much more than the existing eye/worm 'grass' to make them feel appropriate (and I can do more shape-wise if I have the map rewrite to work with, like, an actual giant round eye, heh.  Half-spheres are easy, anyway.)

I don't have additional data or explanations for the various community metrics.  The forum numbers don't feel *tremendously* different.  The 500-700 ranges for Januarys from 2012 to 2019 are pretty consistent; it has dropped a bit, and sometimes it dips into the 300s nowadays, but we had a 739 today, so I really have no idea.  The latest version downloads are currently around 60000 a month, and that's been consistent for the last five months according to these stats.  I don't have the older numbers on hand, but it doesn't strike me as different from what I've seen (and I have no idea how many of those downloads are "real".)

Quote from: Eric Blank
Toady; do monasteries, bandit forts and castles have a mead hall-like zone that counts as being in control of the site once claimed, and pedestals/rooms for artifacts?
Did roadside inns/taverns make it in this time around?

I haven't done the maps yet.  I'll make a note to handle the zones.

Don't have roadside sites at this point.

Quote from: terribleperson
With bandit forts getting added, what features are missing before a DF world could theoretically reenact the classical Chinese novel Water Margin? Could a group of bandits end up serving as a military for the group they once preyed on? Similarly, could a military unit end up as bandits? If not, what features are needed before they could?

Ha, that was a long one with many individual details.  Ignoring those, we'd still need a lot.  The bandit -> military unit transition isn't in.  Right now, the mercenary groups just described in the log still have a wall up between them and bandits, organization-wise, but those are the lines we're hoping to blur entirely later on.  We also don't have more official military units than hired mercenaries -- the armies aren't well-defined, mostly (I don't remember how official they became.)  There's a notion of the reputation/fear/etc. between bandits and the rulers, and of the reason why bandits become bandits; there's a "honorable/righteous outlaw" concept, in the face of tyranny/corruption/etc.  Those are still missing.  Much more, I'm assuming; just refreshing my memory from the wikipedia entry.

Quote from: Asin
Toady, what sort of symbols/tiles represent these new sites you're adding in (monasteries, bandit forts, castles)?

The castles had an existing symbol, the gray circle that's up top in the glyph set.  The monastery is a dark gray one.  The forts use the inverted one up there, brown, like a wooden wall with a central structure.

Quote from: falcc
I notice my starving adventurer dwarf is unwilling to eat live vermin but also won't lick them like she would with another unedible object. Is this because of a moral, an ethic, a bug, or a goofy joke? More importantly is there any intention of a dedicated Lick button as separate from the eat button so we can activate modded talismans or activate modded frogs? Are any advanced Inventory interactions planned for vermin since they can suddenly be a pet and at least picked up and put down? Are any more Shift+I button interactions planned before the big wait since so many fancy items are kicking around now?

Also I've been looking at vermin code a lot and it looks like a few kinds can attack (like bees) but most don't. Is there any reason mosquitos don't bite, even without the bloodsucker effect? Would it be traumatizing to dwarves to be bit by a vermin they don't like, or not any moreso than being around the vermin?

Mel_Vixen: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7921499#msg7921499
Bumber: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7921535#msg7921535

The lick thing is just an old silly message generally; I didn't have particular ideas about live vermin or how it interacted there.  A lick command would go in when there's a serious vanilla reason for it, likely.  I don't have particular plans for more Shift+I stuff in the near-term.  We're missing a ton of adv mode activities dating back to 2002, like digging.  It just needs a directed push at some point.

The raws are just underfed generally.  The Capybara-centric sound system has only been extended in mods, etc.  Just lots to do.

Quote from: Death Dragon
What do the new monasteries look like? Are they multiple buildings in close proximity or are they just one? Are they a big rectangle or is there more to their design?

Dunno!  All the maps are to be worked on, once we get out of worldgen.  They don't have any separate defined structures at this point, but that doesn't mean they won't have buildings, and it's possible they'll end up with a temple and library for some religions.

Quote from: CorkNite
How will the Myth and Magic update affect night-creatures?

The details aren't set, but in the prototype we've been running with more explanations of them that make mythological sense.  This'll likely have effect on their types and appearances, ultimately leading to how they are combatted etc.  Ghosts are a special case; the disposition of the soul etc. in whatever afterlife will likely influence what ghosts are, whether they exist, etc.  As with other vanilla fort mode stuff, there'll likely be options that keep a kind of default ghost-rich environment, to the extent it isn't displaced by something better.

Quote from: Shonai_Dweller
When you start ordering your party around to do villaneous things, will your group show up on the new "villain networks" map? I imagine that would be a lot of fun to track and compare with the other networks in the world.
And, on the same subject,
I know the schedule is now way off, but just how villaneous will we be able to be with our parties. All the way from ordering artifact stealing, assassinations and coups?  (let's say, by the start of the Big Wait in case it's not all in right away)
Oh, and,
Do big villaneous networks persist after the bad guy at the top is dead?

Bumber: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7921568#msg7921568
Death Dragon: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7921572#msg7921572

Ha ha, yeah, that would be amusing.  I'm not sure how the code'll work yet...  it seems like, to get retirement or any specific plot to work, the "intrigue perspective" would need to be implemented for your adventurer, which is what it works from when it outputs the image.  So, probably.

The intention is that you'll be able to use any of the command available in post w.g.  And the intention for post w.g. is that villains will be able to use all of the commands from w.g.  So that's the goal.  That is, we're hoping to have an adventurer-led coup in this release.  Whether or not we can pull it off depends on various factors.  It's quite likely it won't work if the local map is loaded; doing that always takes a ton of extra work, and we don't even have the regular position appointments defined at that level.  This will leave the work to your traveling subordinates, who will then inform you that the final move has been made.  Stuff like assassinations and thefts on the other hand already have local mechanical realizations (or just need a few tweaks.)

Yeah, people running their own assets can keep working.  They all understand what they are in it for, so some of them will stop.  Currently, it doesn't have the villain get lieutenants together in a room to know each other, so the network can't patch up fully like that, as it would in a more organized entity with positions.  At some point, the "criminal organization"/"outcast" entity should probably come into play, but villains right now don't operate with that structure.

Quote from: Shonai_Dweller
Are there raws for the new stats like loyalty, intrigue, etc for our custom civs?

Death Dragon: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7923099#msg7923099
Shonai_Dweller (op): http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7923130#msg7923130

Yeah, intrigue is a skill.  "Loyalty"/"trust"/"fear"/etc. (not as values, but as variables in a relationship between two hfs) don't fit into the raws directly (since we don't have pre-defined hfs), but the related values (and personality etc.) affect them; this system of fleshing out relationships is still in its infancy, so I'm not quite sure if some parts will make it out to the raws or perhaps new values/etc. will be necessary.  Seems okay so far.

Quote
Quote from: Death Dragon
I know there's no way for us to pay them without a proper economy, but can the player in any way interact with these new mercenary companies in fort mode?
Quote from: Thomasasia
How will players be able to interact with the mercenary groups in Fortress Mode?

Shonai_Dweller: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7923142#msg7923142
Death Dragon (op): http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7923167#msg7923167
Shonai_Dweller: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7923176#msg7923176

Ha ha, yeah, we were planning on a special announcement if you get attacked by one; even if it's a little more than you should know about them, it'd be a waste not to get those details out there.  Possible exception is if a lone mercenary (who is part of a company) sneaks into your fort on a job and completes it without being detected; you might not get either their or their company's identity immediately in that case.  But sending out an agent and getting the company identity and then finding a way up the chain is a core part of the planned game here.

To a larger possible point, it wooould be cool if you could hire them.  The trade depot broker does already track the currency value of goods, and there are those coins and everything; just because the proper economy is turned off doesn't mean there isn't already trading.  We're still considering this.  It would be funny if that were the only practical use for fort mode coins for a while, having a dwarf messenger hauling a pile of them off-screen with a job request (unless mercenaries do jobs on credit and you settle up later with a representative; at this point, *if* we get to this, it'll be whatever's easier to program.)  You could see every gold vein as a number of contracts, in coins per tile, if they aren't willing to take your golden figurines.

Quote
Quote from: Untrustedlife
Can player adventurers join and participate in mercenary orders? That sounds like an awesome opportunity to get a "I trained to battle alongside the death mercenaries" kind of story, like that montage you get in basically all fantasy movies, where the monk order or that one knight teach you how to fight. It would also just be cool to go up in rank and have that. And to get those various "contracts" and actually complete them.(Dark Bortherhood here i come)
Quote from: Thomasasia
In adventure mode, will we be able to join them or found our own?

It would be cool, yeah.  I won't know until we get there how the time is feeling, but the recruitment in world gen is pretty easy-going (assuming you profess the correct religion and are willing to use the correct weapons, should those be required), so it would make sense.  We don't quite understand the nature of the new parties, or what it means when a companion joins you when you aren't already in a hearth together; you can make your own hearth, but that's different from these new "military organizations", and it certainly makes sense for the adventurer to be able to found one of those (even more sense than founding a hearth without a site claim.)  We'll just have to see how it all shakes out.  The primary focus for adventure mode additions will be investigating villains and being a villain.  If we get to mercenary stuff, that'll also be good.

I did add the honor/rank/title/etc. system in the hopes of eventually bestowing them on adventurers, and also allowing you to design/play with them in fort mode.  It's unclear when that'll happen.

Quote from: Walkaboutout
So, in the latest dev diary, there is much mention of wealth and currency as it relates to mercenary companies. Talk of upgrading gear with wealth, upkeep costs, etc.

How does this actually work? I've heard no talk (perhaps missed it, there is afterall, lots of info around) of the return of economy, so what exactly constitutes wealth at this point, in this context?

It didn't seem like Toady was referencing the barter that is generally the situation right now, so does anyone have more insight (perhaps from a FotF question I've missed) about how this will play out for the player in, say Fortress mode?

I'm curious to know if this system has an impact on the player in some meaningful way at this point; some fashion in which we can spend coins for things. By this I mean in some other way than the otherwise barter-trade type way we make use of stuff like that right now.

therahedwig: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7923276#msg7923276

Yeah, there's a new 'account' number that abstractly keeps track of what kind of money/power/debt/favors etc. a person can pull.  This'll be fleshed out as we add more systems, but, as with the fort mode trading and existing partial worldgen economy, we can do a few this-or-thats economically when the need arises.  We're still hoping to get to a proper economy at some point after the property/status/etc. release (some portion of an economy is implicit in that release, with the larger scale trade/production stuff more depending on whether or not we remain sufficiently obsessed with boats.)

Quote from: Inarius
Do weapon mercenaries based of axes (for instance) only uses axes, or is it just a preference ?
Will we see bowmen mercenaries ?
Will we see animal-men mercenaries ?
Can a weapon (artifact) be worshiped ?

If they are dedicated, then their weapons are actually restricted.  Yeah, they can be purely dedicated to a single ranged weapon.

If an animal person population moves into a human or dwarf town as sometimes happens, I believe they are as eligible to become mercenaries as anybody.  I haven't seen one as a founder, but I wasn't logging creature types for the general members carefully.

We don't have artifact worship.  We were thinking about having the dedicated mercenaries at least attempt to buy/acquire artifacts of the type they like, but we didn't get there.

Quote from: Shonai_Dweller
Will we see entire merc companies (up to the pop cap) visiting Fortress mode taverns, like performance troupes?

This seems like a reasonable possibility for the ones that don't have permanent forts.  I didn't get to my Mamertine bit yet where mercenary guests decide (on a whim?) to become hostile (Messana); this might be funny, though there'd need to be fair chances/safeguards for the cautious player.

Quote from: Egan_BW
Will we see the armies of regular civilizations getting those nice skill based titles as well as mercenaries? Would be neat to see royal guards with their own generated flowery titles (and above-average skills and equipment, maybe)

Not yet -- there are still no regular armies for civilizations.  Everybody is still just drafted, while there might be a "general" or the lords and their hearth people, the bulk of the battles are done by random civilians.  The mercenary groups use a "military organization" entity type, and part of the idea is to perhaps solve these problems in a satisfying way using a subgroup, but probably not now.  There's also the potential conflict with the militia commander/captain system from fort mode, which generally is too historical-figure-leaning and can't handle large numbers.

Quote from: Witty
Just to confirm, will other entities like bandit groups or possibly even civilizations disband properly once enough of their members have died out, like with mercenary bands?

I haven't changed any buggy death behavior etc. that existed.  There are some additional death checks in world gen, but I haven't exited world gen yet.

Quote from: terribleperson
Artifacts have gotten a lot of love with the update, and look like they're going to get more during the magic update. Related to artifacts, are there any plans to make the properties of procedurally generated megabeasts carry over into the materials they leave behind when they die or are butchered? Similarly, might bronze colossi and dragons leave behind less mundane materials?
It would be very neat for it to be possible to create artifacts or special/artifact items out of the remains of megabeasts, i.e. Leather armor with some of the material properties of brass from the skin of a Titan with small brass scales. I'd love to see a heirloom suit of armor made from the scales of a dragon someone's great-grandfather slew.

Shonai_Dweller: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7923729#msg7923729

The prototype does this a bit already, depending on who dies to make what pieces of the world, and I imagine it'll carry forward, since the 'sphere' associations with such creatures are often used when rolling up new systems/magic/etc.

Generally, materials already pass all of their mundane properties on to the stuff you make, since the material definition is the same (like bone) or derived (like leather), but yeah, there's extra room for the game to recognize and use the really important creatures and their subsequent products.

Quote from: Death Dragon
Got a question from Kram1032's comment on Kruggsmash's latest video:
What exactly did you change to fix the notorious bug that caused cats to die from alcohol poisoning after cleaning themselves? Did you change the amount of content there is in spatterings/smears of contamination in general or did you just change something about how it relates to body size?
The question came up because a well filled with vampire blood contaminated water didn't seem to infect people who drank from it and the comment assumed that it might be related to that bug fix.
Not calling it a bug though. I assume it just means that you require a higher concentration of vampire blood in the water in order to infect people.

Shonai_Dweller: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7923740#msg7923740
PatrikLundell: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7923769#msg7923769
Death Dragon (op): http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7923787#msg7923787
Eric Blank: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7923993#msg7923993

Yeah, my recollection is that all I needed to change was the ingestion amount they were taking in; the amount on the paws wasn't actually that high, maybe, but the ingestion function was being fed a larger inexact amount (since it hadn't mattered up to that point.)  My recollection could be wrong at this point, and I'd defer to earlier remarks if they are any more clear.

I don't think the amount matters with vampire blood, so that's perhaps a bug.

Quote from: Eric Blank
Toady; can mercenary organizations pass down secrets members have? Obviously that death cult didnt get access to the slab or writings about the secret of life and death, but if they do through some means, can that end up worked into their rhetoric the way worship and particular weapons/skills/roles does? Ive made a mod with tons of secrets that dont have reanimation effects, and often see for instance fire mage mercenaries visit my fort.

also, do these companies tend to hold onto artifacts? Im thinking kinda like the stories surrounding the IRL Templar; theyd amass great wealth, supposedly also valuable religious relics, and hoard much of it for themselves or use it to further their interests. What part of those should be viable to see in game?

Secrets:  They don't currently.  Performance troupes don't either.  All of them have a sort of domain-specific segmentation to their teaching.  This should all be softened, and it's certainly appropriate for necromancer death people to take that sort of thing into account, but I'm not sure how it's going to proceed.  If nothing happens before the magic release, certainly the new-and-varied teaching/organizational structure there will come into play.

Artifacts:  Villains do this.  We'd wanted the mercenaries interested in weapons to do so as well, according to the type.  But generally, the account-enabled organizations like mercenaries and merchant companies don't make such investments or take such treasures at the entity-level (they do at the personal level.)  It would make sense, and to the extent the villains are involved and part of company leadership, it'll feel like it sometimes, but there's still more to do.
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Untrustedlife

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #1516 on: February 02, 2019, 12:12:46 am »

Thanks for all the answers toady now I’m even more excited for this release :)
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clinodev

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #1517 on: February 02, 2019, 01:41:13 am »

Quote
I don't have additional data or explanations for the various community metrics.  The forum numbers don't feel *tremendously* different.  The 500-700 ranges for Januarys from 2012 to 2019 are pretty consistent; it has dropped a bit, and sometimes it dips into the 300s nowadays, but we had a 739 today, so I really have no idea.  The latest version downloads are currently around 60000 a month, and that's been consistent for the last five months according to these stats.  I don't have the older numbers on hand, but it doesn't strike me as different from what I've seen (and I have no idea how many of those downloads are "real".)

This topic has come up multiple times recently on the /r/dwarffortress subreddit, for some reason, people all a-panic that the Bay12Forum/Dwarf Fortress community is dying. I wonder what the origin of the concern is.

On the reddit side, which I can speak for as one of the moderators with access to usage numbers, our ~74k members and other unsubscribed readers are generating ~70k unique visitors and 601k to 1M+ page views per month, with a substantial positive subscription rate. They don't give us year over year data, only the previous year, but it doesn't look like a weakening community to me.
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Untrustedlife

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #1518 on: February 02, 2019, 02:59:18 am »

Quote
I don't have additional data or explanations for the various community metrics.  The forum numbers don't feel *tremendously* different.  The 500-700 ranges for Januarys from 2012 to 2019 are pretty consistent; it has dropped a bit, and sometimes it dips into the 300s nowadays, but we had a 739 today, so I really have no idea.  The latest version downloads are currently around 60000 a month, and that's been consistent for the last five months according to these stats.  I don't have the older numbers on hand, but it doesn't strike me as different from what I've seen (and I have no idea how many of those downloads are "real".)

This topic has come up multiple times recently on the /r/dwarffortress subreddit, for some reason, people all a-panic that the Bay12Forum/Dwarf Fortress community is dying. I wonder what the origin of the concern is.

On the reddit side, which I can speak for as one of the moderators with access to usage numbers, our ~74k members and other unsubscribed readers are generating ~70k unique visitors and 601k to 1M+ page views per month, with a substantial positive subscription rate. They don't give us year over year data, only the previous year, but it doesn't look like a weakening community to me.

Seems plenty active to me, even the adventurer sub forum has more activity then it used to. Maybe some of the "concern" came from this post that somehow got upvotes?
https://www.reddit.com/r/dwarffortress/comments/a9hf1j/the_bay12forums_community_is_slowly_dying_why_is/

Regardless discord and reddit are supplanting forums, so that could be one cause of perceived inactivity. And the moderators there say its more popular then ever.
Dwarf fortress has always been a niche game and donations just keep going up, DF is fine.

Also, i absolutely love adventure mode. And play it far more then i do fort mode so i am extremely excited.
« Last Edit: February 02, 2019, 03:18:08 am by Untrustedlife »
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FantasticDorf

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #1519 on: February 02, 2019, 05:03:26 am »

Nice replies, thank you Toady.

Its a pity i couldn't slip mine in earlier as the question came to me this morning in my mind, but "Are the militaristic mercenary groups viable candidates in the future for alternative starting fort scenarios, they seem pretty fleshed out compared to other groups in a self sufficient way besides say- a travelling band of minstrels" Auldsmen we still haven't got a lot of coverage of, we've seen traders, prophets, mercenaries but only the hints of the honest workers of the guilds.

A second tangental question towing the line of a suggestion i guess: "Will auldsmen also have favourite items contrary to their fluffily assigned 'jobs' that they specialise in or am i reading too much into it based of merc's?" here's to thinking contracting a guildmember with a penchant for scimitars (T&C's apply) could be put to work equipping your dwarves just by being a hired specialist to equip them with freshly forged arms, save them just being a tad useless apprenticeship workshop and maybe a background industrial presence in W.G but we'll see what comes out in devlogs i guess.

- At this rate, Toady might just release 'Bannerlord' before M&B dev's do.
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Inarius

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #1520 on: February 02, 2019, 06:36:29 am »

Quote
Generally, materials already pass all of their mundane properties on to the stuff you make, since the material definition is the same (like bone) or derived (like leather), but yeah, there's extra room for the game to recognize and use the really important creatures and their subsequent products.

Finding a legendary leather or scale armor from a dragon, well, it would be really a huge step in the game.

Thanks for the reply, Toady !
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Death Dragon

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #1521 on: February 02, 2019, 07:01:00 am »

Thanks, Toady.

Quote from: Shonai_Dweller
Well, gotta ask this one (just regarding the villains release):
Fortress Mode coups? Yea? Nay? Maybe?
He he he.
Nice.

Quote
Quote from: Death Dragon
I know there's no way for us to pay them without a proper economy, but can the player in any way interact with these new mercenary companies in fort mode?
Quote from: Thomasasia
How will players be able to interact with the mercenary groups in Fortress Mode?

Shonai_Dweller: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7923142#msg7923142
Death Dragon (op): http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7923167#msg7923167
Shonai_Dweller: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7923176#msg7923176

Ha ha, yeah, we were planning on a special announcement if you get attacked by one; even if it's a little more than you should know about them, it'd be a waste not to get those details out there.  Possible exception is if a lone mercenary (who is part of a company) sneaks into your fort on a job and completes it without being detected; you might not get either their or their company's identity immediately in that case.  But sending out an agent and getting the company identity and then finding a way up the chain is a core part of the planned game here.

To a larger possible point, it wooould be cool if you could hire them.  The trade depot broker does already track the currency value of goods, and there are those coins and everything; just because the proper economy is turned off doesn't mean there isn't already trading.  We're still considering this.  It would be funny if that were the only practical use for fort mode coins for a while, having a dwarf messenger hauling a pile of them off-screen with a job request (unless mercenaries do jobs on credit and you settle up later with a representative; at this point, *if* we get to this, it'll be whatever's easier to program.)  You could see every gold vein as a number of contracts, in coins per tile, if they aren't willing to take your golden figurines.
I love this. It delays the update release by a bit more, but man oh man would it be amazing to finally get some purpose for coins in fortress mode again.
Would still need a bunch of other work though of course. Can't wait until the update finally comes to the fort mode implementations.
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FantasticDorf

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #1522 on: February 02, 2019, 11:51:25 am »

Im in the same mind as Death Dragon about the whole mercenary band thing, though being said i would hope that it can at the moment remain abstract from the visitor system so that off-site activities via messenger courier like Toady detailed are abstract. A bed for the night, and hospitality is worth itself and in a economy, only really benefits the inn-keeper to collect loose coppers & silvers for drinks in too meagre a way to justify putting economy functions back in proper without shaking them down for taxes which the coins should have gone to you anyway.

Unless of course, money demands and prices help respectively grease the slow turning wheels (taking ingame years) of the systems we already have in and around visitors and other mechanics.
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therahedwig

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #1523 on: February 02, 2019, 04:19:13 pm »

Thanks for the answers!

Rather amused at villains having to gain funds to make a hide out. I am now imagining all those necromancers just sitting around in a grass field with hundreds of zombies, writing books about accounting, how to budget a building project, and debating whether or not raising the dead is tax-deductable (unfortunately, the latter will need to wait till the law and property arc :C ).

Super excited for the sites work :)

This topic has come up multiple times recently on the /r/dwarffortress subreddit, for some reason, people all a-panic that the Bay12Forum/Dwarf Fortress community is dying. I wonder what the origin of the concern is.

On the reddit side, which I can speak for as one of the moderators with access to usage numbers, our ~74k members and other unsubscribed readers are generating ~70k unique visitors and 601k to 1M+ page views per month, with a substantial positive subscription rate. They don't give us year over year data, only the previous year, but it doesn't look like a weakening community to me.

I suspect they must've started playing DF during a time period when there was a lot of activity, and are surprised at the lowered activity currently.

Having played DF for 10 years... People just come and go? Like, a whole bunch of people that were once teenagers are now adults that are spending time on adulting, people play DF in different ways, etc. I bet we're gonna see them super confused when there's going to be bugfix releases after a big release. ;)
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PlumpHelmetMan

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #1524 on: February 02, 2019, 04:51:58 pm »

It's also important to remember that only a fraction of the people who play DF and support/fund its development are even an active part of its online community. Forums like this don't exactly give an accurate impression of the entirety of DF's playerbase. The most accurate measure we can have of DF's popularity IMO is level of donations, and as Untrustedlife says those just keep on going up.

Anyway, thanks for the answers as always Toady. Good luck on wrapping up the worldgen work this month.
« Last Edit: February 02, 2019, 04:58:56 pm by PlumpHelmetMan »
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Egan_BW

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #1525 on: February 02, 2019, 08:56:17 pm »

Mm mmm, those are some tasty answers! I really hope that we get to mercenary interactions in fort and adventurer modes.
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terribleperson

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #1526 on: February 03, 2019, 12:49:12 am »

Thank you for the answers, Toady. I'm pretty excited for mercenaries and villainous plots to be running around shaking things up.
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Aid

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #1527 on: February 03, 2019, 08:07:24 am »

Hello Toadi, thank you for the questions and answers.Now question,will the mode of Legends change, now without utilities difficult


Why dwarves are only defending, I thought that after the last release they will attack

I heard that you want to change the legends mode, is it possible to do so that in the games themselves they see how some of the known information is wobbling and when exporting there was all the information in XML dump

How do you think when the game is ready in your opinion

People have already started to think when magic and myths will come out in a special topic, you have a date when you want to get an update?

What is your development plan now? Release the villainous update, myths and magic in parts and then what will you do?

Did you ever think of throwing a game?

How long now is the generation of the world now? And in general, the performance of the dwarf fortress
« Last Edit: February 20, 2019, 02:59:43 pm by Aid »
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PatrikLundell

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #1528 on: February 03, 2019, 08:37:10 am »

Hello Toadi, thank you for the questions and answers.Little question,will the mode of Legends change, now without utilities it is difficult
Given that there are 3:rd party utilities to make Legends Mode info more accessible, it's probably a better use of Toady's time to improve the contents (to include all the new stuff), rather than the presentation, plus, of course, to provide all the new things that fuel Legends.
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Shonai_Dweller

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #1529 on: February 03, 2019, 08:39:48 am »

Hello Toadi, thank you for the questions and answers.Little question,will the mode of Legends change, now without utilities it is difficult
Yes. It's a long term project but it (and, really, everything else in the game) isn't in any kind of "completed" state.

One update we should see sooner rather than later (5-6 years from now as opposed to 10-15)  is a similar interface to the upcoming Myth Generator which uses a kind of hypertext interface.

And of course, Toady also gives us the option to export the data to use externally. That'll always be there and support will continue for that with increasingly more access to data for exporting  (again, in the long-term).

In the end though, external viewers will almost always be the best way to get at maps and stuff.
« Last Edit: February 03, 2019, 08:42:39 am by Shonai_Dweller »
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