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Author Topic: Future of the Fortress  (Read 2850391 times)

King Zultan

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #300 on: April 29, 2018, 02:27:28 am »

The existing myth generator footage should give you a good idea as to what sort of themes Dwarf Fortress magic will have.
I haven't seen this, can I have a link?
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Knight Otu

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #301 on: April 29, 2018, 02:34:56 am »

The existing myth generator footage should give you a good idea as to what sort of themes Dwarf Fortress magic will have.
I haven't seen this, can I have a link?

There are some short bits in here, and a longer video here. In the latter, Toady's part starts about 10 minutes in, I believe.
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Doorkeeper

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #302 on: April 29, 2018, 02:42:14 am »

Obligatory reminder that there won't be a single magic system goes here.
There won't be a single magic system. It will be procedurally generated for each world.

I am sure that knowledge is known to everyone here by now, except for newcomers and returning members. How would someone be misinformed that there would be no procedural magic system in the future, by giving an example of a magic class in order to illustrate an unrelated question? The example actually implies varieties, and it mentioned "low-myth mode" and "higher myth strength worlds", referencing the degrees of generated magic for different worlds.

Why is it an "obligatory reminder"? Said information is reposted throughout the website, I don't think there's a demand to write another one. You don't need to remind anyone in the forum unless they are obviously misinformed or specifically ask for it. And you can't expect for people to be properly informed when you answer with no clarity and consideration like your first response.
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Doorkeeper

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #303 on: April 29, 2018, 02:43:48 am »

Is it mechanically variable? Thematic? A lot of the changes between one magic system in another won't mean much at all if there's no unifying themes that they gravitate towards, considering that in it's current iteration, dwarf fortress largely lacks driven intent in actions. Most interactions and syndromes don't actually do anything directly in worldgen (there's special tags to cause transmission of werebeast and vampire curse that operate only in worldgen, and completely independent of any blood syndromes.)

I don't think he was implying that.
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KittyTac

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #304 on: April 29, 2018, 03:00:36 am »

Mechanically variable and will have worldgen effects. Also, RIP magic mods, these would have to be redesigned.
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iceball3

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #305 on: April 29, 2018, 10:02:04 pm »

Mechanically variable and will have worldgen effects. Also, RIP magic mods, these would have to be redesigned.
That actually leads me to wonder, will the "Worldgen implications" of magic be emergent or hardcoded? In the former case, "social values" and civics need to actually be fleshed out properly to get an accurate reflection on what magic means to the population.
In simple terms, interactions which turn dwarves into amorphous masses that instantly evaporate into skin-boiling steam currently have no actual long term social implications in dwarf fortress by the effect alone: the closest you can get to that is writing in some lines in the raws that make the power itself seem ideologically repugnant.
Even still, the much-reviled necromancer towers never get torn down, even if sieging the location while setting the countryside ablaze would be sufficient for smoking out it's occupants. For example.

If the worldgen implications of magic will merely be thematically hardcoded, then the questions of "druidic themes" and whatnot aren't very farfetched, as the pool of themes you can draw from is just a bundle of stereotypes and preset stories told in different orders and with different faces, and the point of making magic procedural generated is basically just consulting a team of mediocre mod makers to make a bunch of DF Magic Mods with for you every time you kick on worldgen.
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KittyTac

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #306 on: April 29, 2018, 10:09:02 pm »

The myth release will include preparation for Laws and Customs, Toady said that in an interview, that for example teleportation is possible, but it costs half of your blood, people would have to evaluate if it is worth it.
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iceball3

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #307 on: April 30, 2018, 07:15:20 am »

The myth release will include preparation for Laws and Customs, Toady said that in an interview, that for example teleportation is possible, but it costs half of your blood, people would have to evaluate if it is worth it.
Seeing that the law-and-customs release is going to have a hand in consideration for mythgen preparation gives me a bit of relief on this subject, then.
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Bumber

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #308 on: April 30, 2018, 04:55:26 pm »

Is there going to be a way to add some kind of deadline to a mission in the next couple of updates? I hear other players having issues with squads wandering around forever.

I realize this a bit close to a suggestion/bugfix. However, it seems relevant to the imminent version release, and it's the end of the month, so I thought I'd ask.
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Shonai_Dweller

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #309 on: April 30, 2018, 05:13:15 pm »

Is there going to be a way to add some kind of deadline to a mission in the next couple of updates? I hear other players having issues with squads wandering around forever.

I realize this a bit close to a suggestion/bugfix. However, it seems relevant to the imminent version release, and it's the end of the month, so I thought I'd ask.
So long as there's news coming in every so often about what squads are up to, I not sure there's need for a time limit. It's a quest after all, not a military maneuver. It's the current silent 'are they broken, are they bar hopping?' uncertainty which is the main problem.
(Apologies for treating your question like the start of a suggestion discussion. Kind of seemed like one). :)
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Toady One

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #310 on: May 01, 2018, 02:22:21 am »

Thanks to PatrikLundell, Shonai_Dweller, Manveru Taurënér, KittyTac, Knight Otu, MCreeper, PlumpHelmetMan, Dorsidwarf, voliol, and anybody I missed for helping to answer questions this time!

Quote from: Warlord255
1) Are you planning to add more interesting behavior tokens for use by generated and/or mundane creatures?

As it stands, most monsters don't seem very proactive. Randomly generated interactions are cool, and are slated to get a lot cooler, but active trouble-seeking behavior is limited to a handful of tags. CRAZED, MISCHIEVOUS, BUILDINGDESTROYER and CURIOUSBEAST_GUZZLER come to mind, but not much else. Is there hope for a CURIOUSBEAST_GOBBLER, perhaps, that could result in forgotten beasts that "hunger for metal" and go around eating swords, or Giant Termites/Beavers that devour your wooden items?

2) Are you planning to use existing tools more extensively for more generated magic weirdness?

The Modding forum has achieved some seriously strange effects with the existing system, and it might be worth your time to take a look for ideas. There's so much that's possible already - grasses with SYN_INGESTED that turn horses into unicorns, EXTRA_BUTCHER_OBJECT to spawn syndrome vapors when you butcher a magic animal, acid-puking bite attacks by removing ENTERS_BLOOD from venom... even coal dust and exploding cursed gemstones! Seeing these types of effects in the Magic update would be a real treat.

There's a lot of work to do here, but it has never seemed like the right time to go into some of the details.  It seems more likely when we do the individual combat stuff, for a lot of it, but some of the new random critters which come up in the magic release might lead to taking a look.

I'm not sure what the first magic system raws will look like, so it's a bit early to say.  It's going to need a large change, but the existing interaction/syndrome framework will probably survive, even if interactions get hammered quite a bit.  I'm going to focus on straightforward support for the new effects, rather than trying to overload existing tools, but I'm sure that'll come up from time to time.

Quote from: FantasticDorf
"Will semi-intelligent combatant's role in conflicts be more streamlined by the time of better integration into raiding and armies of war animals and mounts?"

I imagine this to be slightly different to the previous question on 'support roles' because already, goblins already employ trolls for off map conflicts implicitly of virtually any size without having to need to add any tags onto the creature themselves. It doesn't always turn out smoothly and you hear rumors about oddities like some trolls appearing wearing iron armor & others of goblins riding on their backs without much consistency as what to expect through a mixture of possibly buggy application.

I don't have a timeline for improving those definitions and wouldn't count on anything here.  It is a problem, though, and trolls are especially strange the way the game treats them.  We might see some stuff early, but it would probably be best handled when we have better underlying notions from the 'status' changes later on, where we'd have entire profiles defining the position of semi-intelligent creatures and how they and their co-residents understand the situation.

Quote from: Magistrum
Once we get tributes going, will we get demands from the mountain homes, like food for metropolises and equipment when in war time? Will they bear any resemblance to the current noble demand system?

We're focusing on tribute to the player at first, but having to serve your dwarven rulers is an eventual goal, especially tied to the start scenario stuff.  As more army equipment/supply/economy features goes in, it can start to make sense.  It would be best for it to be non-arbitrary, most of the time.

Quote from: vvAve
With the magic update, will world creation myth be incorporated in religions? Is it possible for different civilizations to share religion/pantheon?

Yeah, religions won't just incorporate the myths, but they will be entirely dependent on them.  In the situation where the myth actors are real and global and involved, I imagine different civilizations will all share the same religion to a great degree, as there would be a larger corrective factor when people are wrong.  If the powers have withdrawn or don't exist, sharing would be less common, depending on how the people came into being geographically, and we can sometimes be in the same situation we have in DF now where everybody is different.  I'm hoping it can be a bit more flexible in terms of evolving beliefs and cultural drift/syncretism, but a lot of that will have to wait for the rewrites that'll allow the same for customs etc., after the magic release.

Quote from: Atomic Chicken
With the upcoming addition of medical care for adventurers, do you envision yourself making any changes to the wound system so as to increase the relevance of medical care as a game mechanic? At present, it is entirely possible for most creatures to survive having an entire limb severed off despite taking no measures to restrict blood loss, which is somewhat immersion-breaking to say the least. On a similar note, will the 'instant healing' effect of fast travelling and sleep be removed or modified in any way?

Yeah, we had some thoughts along these lines, but I'm not sure what'll end up happening.  The medical notes both internally and from suggestions are extensive, but that makes for a large rewrite as well.

Quote from: PatrikLundell
How does the visitor cap interact with visiting groups (performance troupes and questers currently)? I can see three alternatives:
1. Current #visitors + group size > cap => Block the group from entering.
2. Cut the group entering at the point where the visitor cap is reached (which would explain why performance troupes typically arrive with only a few members, even when Legends info claims there are more members alive).
3. Lenient: If the first member of the group makes it in the whole group does (which can be problematic with infiltrator group armies [I had a 127 member army and a 120 member army {largely same members} before questers and monster hunters were made to respect the visitor cap]).
Terminology: "Infiltrator" = member of quester group who all go loyalty hostile when a group member leaves and returns attacking the fortress to get the artifact sought.

My understanding is that it always sums the total number of expected visitors and disallows the group if it would go over the cap.  I imagine the troupes have various reasons (including bugs) as to why they might not travel together, but that's not the general intended behavior.

Quote from: Shonai_Dweller
So, tell us something of hill dwarves. I've read all you've said about them and their deep cousins in the past, but now that they're upcoming, how will they work exactly? They are dwarves from the surrounding abstract population near your fortress? Or are they the populations from the world's dwarf hillocks (presumably if any exist)? Which we'll be able to send into war, right?
Will that Just Fit with modded worlds? If we're playing elves (as some people are want to do, apparently) will we be able to call up the surrounding pops of animal people (which often flock to elf sites) to fight? Or will it just be a selection of elves? And indeed, in vanilla games will the surrounding non-dwarf pops also be eligible as "hill dwarves" ready for cannon fodder duty?

They'll have to be in hillocks; the current non-player forts don't have large abstract populations (if I remember, they shouldn't anyway, the caps are supposed to be low), and we'd continue that pattern.  This might involve getting new hillocks closer to your fort when you become a barony through the existing post w.g. site foundation mechanic (the news of your elevation might come as they arrive), depending on what we can arrange for in this set of releases, or existing hillocks reassigned to your barony.  Earning the barony early by force would have you using your site administrators on the human/elf/etc. sites you've conquered to levy human/etc. soldiers, which I imagine should have its downsides, whether we get to them or not.

It should all work in modded worlds, provided the modded populations are aboveground and fit whatever base requirements we have (for instance, are there baron-type land-holder linkages as the dwarves use, or a civ-entity-level position that puts you in charge of mobilization of all sites?  the latter is less likely to be supported as it doesn't fit the vanilla mold, but we might get there depending on how the messengers/administration works.)  If the animal people pops are integrated into a site using that relatively recent mechanic, they'll be available by default.

Quote from: Buttery_Mess
With the magic release, I expect the code for strange moods will be revised. I think we can expect magical effects tied to artifacts. But;

1. Can we expect artifacts to be de-hardcoded, so that, for instance newer skills like Pottery and Waxworking will be moodable, along with potentially nodded new skills and workshops?
2. Can we look forward to a general revision of workshops since this is tied to moods?
3. Will item type constrain the sort of spheres to which the artifact is attached, so that we are, for example, more likely to generate a golden sarcophagus of resurrection than a pig iron bucket that summons fluffy wambler remains?
4. Traditionally, wizard magic is a big no no for dwarves. Do you think we'll be able to make dwarf wizards anyway on our forts, if we want to?

1+2. It all ties into the base jobs being pulled into the raws, and I'm not sure that that'll happen here.

3. All manner of flavor is valuable, and I'm sure it'll respect certain facts about item type.  Other item types might also be promoted by their incidental connections in a myth (at least that would be favorable.)  It's hard to say what we'll get to, but linking a used item type in a myth to some power associated to that sort of object is the sort of thing we'll be doing generally.

4. It depends on what you mean and the settings for that world.  "Geomancers" and "Rune <X>ers" are common dwarf 'wizard' types that aren't closely linked to the more-often-used priest powers.  Then there's the more traditional links to magical item production, which is a sort of magic.  The more vanilla settings will lean this way, toward 'dwarfy' magics, I suspect.  Others will allow more arbitrary research and spell opportunities.  Even in the vanilla settings, doing things like exploring runes and the powers of the earth would be on the table as research-style possibilities.

Quote from: eerr
I've seen projects like this before add choices. The choice between a prison colony and say, founding a powerful religious site or a new central mountainhome.
I can't remember the details, but people tended to choose things like the latter two. I am not saying a prison colony can't become almost the same thing, but people choose the latter two because it's more gratifying.
Starting a prison colony has a negative stigma.

1. How will starting scenarios enable people to fulfill their power fantasy?
2. One problem I found with embarking anywhere, is lack of access to hard metals, like iron, silver and copper. Will a retired mining colony be able to, indefinitely/for a very long time, supply these resources? It doesn't particularly matter to me if the mines are properly depleted, or just there for flavor. This is the main reason embarking anywhere is a problem.

1. Setting aside the prison scenario (where what is meant by a power fantasy would need to be established), I don't see why a power fantasy needs to be involved.  Not everybody needs to want to play every scenario, though obviously a variety of factors will determine which ones I spend more time with, including player interest.  There are entire popular games about prisons, so I don't suspect that'll be an issue, but I have no real idea.

2. Like for the economy when we are quantifying that?  It should be possible to be supplied from other sites that specialize, yeah, though presumably you'd have a reason you are receiving it as well, and if your embark is economically worthless and not politically supported (in any broad sense), then you'd still have trouble.  But a wider variety of sites would be supported, yeah.

Quote from: gnome
Do you eventually intend to implement the effects of starvation/dehydration into npcs for Adventure Mode? If so what arc would that be expected in (if any)? I imagine this sort of thing will have interesting effects on gameplay especially when the economy is reactivated, maybe even disputes between different civs could be about resources, or maybe questlines to fetch things for people as they are treated as necessary for survival. I could see the complexity of relations could be further elaborated on as "helping others" as a value becomes more important or more immediately relevant to some.

Yeah, we're hoping to have it for everybody.  Which is hard.  But it's mostly economy-related, yeah.  We used to have the little schedules and magic food barrels, but now we have the food stockpiles they don't use (they are used in worldgen.)  It's possible to do it properly, but we need food moving around for cities to function.  Resource disputes are one of the reasons the economy had preceded the army stuff in certain dev road map formulations, but we've switched back around for the time being (and are paying for that in certain ways, but it has been okay so far.)

Quote from: Random_Dragon
Suppose you have a mod that changes entities to behave in a specific way that is required for some other aspect of the mod to function. Moreover, suppose that the future myth generator would potentially completely break this entity by forcing it to use hardcoded generated critters, entity tokens and such.

Is there going to be any way for a raw mod to restrict how mythgen is handled, so that if you want to FORCE the game to use certain civs it'll do so, regardless of mythgen settings?

The reason I ask this is because if this option does not exist, the myth arc is almost guaranteed to break pretty much every civ-focused raw mod in existence, and counting on the user to advanced-worldgen more "vanilla" worlds is not an optimal solution.

To be clear, I'm sure the myth release is going to break a ton of mods initially whether I address this particular concern or not.  That is a given.  Saves will also not survive.

I'm not sure what specific tag scenario you are imagining here, so it's hard to say what's going to happen.  We've mentioned certain ways that a specific object (say, the dwarf) will be able to communicate restrictions up to the larger vanilla myth settings (by requesting, say, earth-related magics), without needing to change the settings themselves.  There are other possibilities depending on what you mean.  If somebody installs a mod, we could also provide ways for the mod to generally speak to or override params, since the installation of a mod is a buy-in at that point, though especially once we are messing around with editors and so forth, some in-DF handling of different mod folders/etc. on some kind of separated basis of the various kinds suggested over the years might need another look.  With some degree of that, total conversion style mods should be able to side step myth gen entirely (this is also implicit in the notion of editors, so some form of it is definitely going in with those.)  So, I wouldn't be concerned, but the first release will by bumpy (for a zillion reasons.)

Quote from: Buttery_Mess
When you rewrite the map code, can we expect to see any change to aquifers?

I imagine that new versions will include a "vanilla" setting that includes the standard races and enemies with which we are familiar, like the flesh-eating elves and mischievous kobolds. Do you have in mind a standard "vanilla" set of rules in mind for magic and myth once it's implemented, either as a baseline from which other modes deviate or as one permutation amongst many?

It's possible; everything would be a little less layer-focused, though there'd still be geological features.

Aside from the sliders, there's also the idea of having a default set of (right now) sphere-related tags that can guide the generation to vaguely e.g. 'dwarfy' magics, and also the idea of having strict set features in the raws.  We're in a complicated situation now of saying which is more vanilla -- strict presets, or rough guidelines.  Currently, we're leaning toward sliders and guidelines as being the most vanilla-feeling options, so that people will engage with the new features.  At the same time, there's some value in having a set frame, and perhaps we'll still have one of those.  This also raises the question of, once we have editors, should there be an even more fixed setting for people to play around with, and should the game have a world packed-in?  That feels very non-DF-ish, but it might also serve as a useful example in any editors.  But yeah, I imagine the 'dwarfy guidelines' option will be the one put forth as The Default for the use of new players.

Quote from: keupo
The new outdoor cleaning feature is nice, but it poses a real problem in evil biomes with blood rain. An order, like the gather refuse outside order, but for cleaning outside would be great. Is this something I could hope for?

It's possible for us to take another pass at it, especially if new issues have arisen.  I can collect issues with the new system over in suggestions more easily.

Quote from: voliol
What are your thoughts on creatures that went extinct after the technological cutoff of year 1500 (e.g. dronts, tasmanian devils)? Are they excluded from the lists of animals that might be added in the future?

Knight Otu mentioned DF Talk where I said I'm not getting rid of polar bears, and that stands generally.  It would be very depressing.  If I remember, a few of our animals were sponsored back in the sponsorship drive specifically so they'd have a home even after they disappear.  Which is also depressing, but in any case I'm not going to remove them.  So I'm happy to add the others, though clearly adding specific animals of any kind should not be the highest priority right now as we've already given short shrift to the ones we did add.

Quote from: Shonai_Dweller
Will historical figure dwarves pick up memories in worldgen too? Some of my migrants are war veterans with hundreds of kills and histories of surviving multiple massacres.

I thought about doing this, but it's not entirely simple, as the circumstances and incidents don't exist in the same way.  Having to write a parallel system put inertia on it, but it's on the table now, and would certainly make existing historical figures more interesting characters and also foreground some of the legends.

Quote from: FantasticDorf
Though it may be self explanatory, will "memories" make the dwarves omniscience without the world end and help them to become more conscious by expressing personal things that have happened to them rather than abstract random civilization events. Poorly travelled dwarves being ignorant etc.

As in to give a relevant example, more strictly enforced civilization & personal level knowledge events, sort of like messing with the configuration that only makes them aware of things that happened on site, and losing touch with the progress of the world if they are separated from regular diplomatic visits from caravans & visitors.

and a side question

Will past memories & events scribed into books, engravings and passed down through generations of oral stories affect dwarves recollection of events?

The memories form when the dwarf has a personal experience, so it's a new system not related to the current entity-level omniscience regarding world events; I can't use memories to model world knowledge more generally as we'd run out of memory doing that.  The best we have is having civilization/culture-linked rumors, which at least stops the instant spread of knowledge everywhere, and the current witness memories which don't spread if the person doesn't get a chance to spread them.

I haven't done anything with memories and media/art/stories.

Quote from: Rubik
So, Toady, now that Dwarves risk becoming perma-depressed over a spouse dying (according to the upcoming stress balance update), Is there any plans to allow dwarves to remarry? would be tiresome to get the tavern full of grieving dwarves after every battle with the goblins if they never leave it

I don't have a specific timeline for this, but generally, the personal relationships should be more complicated and less static than they are now.

Quote from: Beag
1. Once the myth and magic update is released/partially released in worlds that have magic will NPC wizards make their own discoveries about magic during world generation? If so how wide spread could the knowledge they discover become?
2. Will each world with magic also generate it's own ways of researching magic and magical secrets or will there be a common set of ways or researching magic?
3. Once one of our adventurer wizards makes a discovery will that discovery be revealed in the myth viewer sort of like a fog of war with magic information?
4. Will our adventurers in some worlds with magic be able to make advances in discovering magical secrets with their own research or will they always need the help of a well established NPC wizard?

1. Yeah, similar to the current library system for instance, where knowledge is both discovered and spread in w.g. and somewhat in post w.g., though I imagine scholars won't be the only interested actors here.

2. It'll generate them.  I imagine people will see all of the general contours pretty quickly, over a few worlds with enough systems, as with most procedural generation, but the details and interconnections should keep it interesting.

3. There are currently events for the first discoverer of a knowledge bit for the scholars/libraries, and I don't imagine that'll change.

4. As with libraries, forts will have a bit of an advantage, given the number of people, at least for magic that can be researched in one location (or with helper squads.)  We're hoping to get player adventurers more involved in research this time, but I'm not sure if that crosses back into having them do discoveries in the regular scholar system; it seems possible we'll start having different time passage systems for adventurers.
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Toady One

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #311 on: May 01, 2018, 02:22:47 am »

Quote from: squamous
1. Could we expect the ability to fast-travel through dark pits/caves if they are inhabited by friendly creatures in the near or far future? What about fording rivers or climbing mountains, though those might be tied to skills like swimming and climbing.
2. What exactly is the current reload time for bows and crossbows? Is there a difference between the two?
3. Would it eventually be possible to adjust the parameters of cave civs to create sites that are less labyrinthine? Sort of like the current worldgen settings for cavern passage density.
4. If [LOCAL_POPS_PRODUCE_HEROES] is added to an intelligent creature set to only spawn as the pets of an existing civilization, will fully-fledged civilized creatures be drawn from that population of pets, or is it required that they spawn in the wilderness to join a civilization as a proper member?

1. I won't be touching the underground before the map rewrite.  There is a decent chance of many things being handled then.  I know river crossing is annoying, though I don't have a timeline on fixing that.  Mountains are less clear; as they get steeper and more cliff-like again, it should be a local achievement to climb them, if there's any chance you can fall.

2. There is no reloading, there is a post shot delay, if I remember, which is a silly system we've wanted to change for years.  I don't think we distinguished the weapons.

3. All of the sites need a lot of parameters.  I agree the current dwarf/etc. sites are still completely frustrating.

4. I don't think it draws from pet populations.

Quote from: thvaz
Apart from being replaced by equal or stronger events, do long term memories fade over time? That is, they lose strength over the years to give the chance to other not so strong events to replace it in that long term memory spot?

That doesn't happen yet; that's the kind of thing I was considering under "grappling with long term memories" in the dev log, along with grouping memories in life stages.  Whether that always means fading over time, or obsessing on a single memory, or whatever, would depend on the memory and the person, probably, as we have personality traits for that.  Whatever we end up with should be interesting, story-building, relayed to the player, and not always about the simple dooming of forts.  Certainly the form it has now will need to be adjusted.

Quote from: golemgunk
Are memory slots going to be tied to the Memory attribute?

This kind of major emotional memories seem like something that everybody would have if they have a memory at all...  memory as an attribute should be more subtle.  Of course, right now it's so subtle as to be useless, so something has to give somewhere.

Quote from: Shonai_Dweller
I think most people can imagine at least 8 horrific things that could happen over the course of a couple of years in-game, but what are potential long-term good memories that might help sooth a poor dorf's life? Getting married, having children, crafting ones first masterwork (possibly), being elected mayor (maybe), what else?

Depending on the person, falling in love, getting out of prison, mastering a skill...  perhaps more, but they aren't trivial to look up as the emotion type impacts the magnitude of the effect and those have personality branches.  We'll have to develop the system more as discussed if the balance of good memories isn't enough, and it likely isn't.

Quote from: Lordfiscus
1. Will you be able to reverse undeath in the future? Or, in the case of sentient race's corpses, will undead/thralls be able to have their minds restored? Could one have a thrall fortress, then?               
2. Will "Magic Missile"-type spells exist? How effective will they be, if not analogous to crossbow bolts/arrows?
3. I've heard that casting will be song-based from other users. Will this be the only way to cast spells, or will there be more classical methods, a la wands/books/staves/talismans? Does the material used to make such items affect casting functionality? Could a metal casting tool double as a bludgeoning weapon? Will one be able to make dual weapons/casting tools which the user alternates based on distance to target/threat severity?
4. What is the malus to using casting, if any? Is it simply how many times you can use a casting tool/ability per action? Like if it's song-based, the number of mouths on the creature? Or will there be a mana/focus/essence count that depletes as spells are used?
5. Can spells be fired through fortifications or is there a chance the projectile will hit the fortifications as it moves if too large, possibly setting off spell prematurely?
6. Can casting devices be made, a la ballistae or catapults, or even traps?

1. Will mind-affecting spells exist? Includes: Memory-alteration/removal/inclusion, intelligence reduction/increase, raising/lowering the speed at which dwarves become proficient at their craft, and writing curses on walls that compel readers to read the information on them and convey it to others, repeating the curse's effect. Also possibly something inducing berserk states.

1. That seems like a system-dependent question, and you'd have to address what happens if all the bits are scattered around and so forth.  Certain types of 'undeath' involve an ostensibly deadish body but the original soul is still in there and it's just sort of a curse.  This might be reversible.  Others would require the restoration of a desiccated corpse while the soul is also reunited with the body, etc.

2. It really depends on the system it makes.  Little flying bolts of magical energy can be a fine thing, ranging from pinpricks to instadeath.  Each take on it changes the nature of the world and society to a varying degree.  Other worlds won't have that kind of magic; certainly some people will want it turned off.

3. There will be various methods, depending on what it cooks up.  Songs are simply on the table as an option, since we have them (along with dance and poetry, etc.)  In the current myth generator example, I think it had some material dependent examples.  You can whack people with most stuff in DF, so I imagine that tradition will continue.

4. Yeah, it's all on the table.  We're hoping to vaguely be able to match casting costs and powers (if desired by setting, which it usually is), but I'm sure there'll be some initial and ongoing spectacular failures there.

5. Hard to say.  Arrows currently work that way, so it seems possible.

6. Similarly, as we get more far afield, the less likely something will pop up on the first pass, but we're up for supporting anything that appears in a generic fantasy setting, and magical traps and magical siege weapons are all in there.

1. All of those effects are in our candidate list which the myth generator currently uses (not the wall one specifically, but the idea of controlling actions and forced questing.)  It just depends on any implementation stumbling blocks we run into.

Quote from: thvaz
Will we have the framework for raiders expanded somewhat while you are working on off site armies? For example, sending provisions/cargo animals for the loot, etc . Or this is going to be developed post magic updates?

It depends; we're really not ready for masses of goods to be moved around, but slightly expanding the volume from tribute/raiding would be fine.  I'm not sure what I'll get to.

Quote from: Disgrunt
How will priests, and the role they play in different cultures, intersect with the Myth/Magic update? Will priests have access to some kind of magic or divine powers? Will players be able to become priests?

There are a variety of possibilities depending on the ongoing relationship between people and gods, if they exist.  The player should have access to religious powers in both modes if they exist and overlap with the current playable roles (ie, not just restricted to a human ruler from a specific bloodline or whatever.)

Quote from: PlumpHelmetMan
Do NPCs in adventure mode ever reflect on their memories when you ask them about their emotional state?

If they are currently reflecting on them, it'll be part of their emotional state, but the question doesn't trigger new thoughts.

Quote from: ShinyandKittens
What will portals do? Can they be two-way transports to other locations, or a thing that creates new creatures? Can demons emerge from them? Can they appear in fort mode and summon vermin? Can they be summoned manually? How? Lots more questions

PatrikLundell mentioned doing one-way is easier, and will be the starting point, especially if the map rewrite is not done.  Once they connect two loaded locations, if they are that sort of portal, then anything should be able to pass through (if allowed by the rules of magic); vermin or dwarves or items or whatever.  You get into issues with how projectiles work, since it depends on whether a projectile that enters a tile is also supposed to have entered the portal; in the past, doing things like directions has been hard to display, but some portals will definitely want directions so that for instance magma could pour out of them in a given direction -- then what happens when a creature enters that square from the other side in the non-magma world?  Ideally, this would be set by the system, but practically, certain options will be much harder than others to implement, especially where efficient path-finding is involved.

Quote from: Goonts
With the myth and magic arc will choosing a demigod adventurer affect the way the game will be played in any new ways?
Like will choosing demigod actually give you specific divine parentage? Of course this would rely on the setting, but could you be given powers based on your parentage?
Or will the demigod setting just be renamed to something else, or simply kept as is with no further affects other than increased attribute and skill points?

We were hoping to get to this at some point, and we'd be in a better position to do it, anyway.  At the time, if the demigod setting doesn't make sense for a given world, it'd be renamed or removed, yeah, and generally, there will be whole new options specifically tied to the system created for that world, much like other games' settings, where you might start as a "magma-souled dwarven runecaster" or something sufficiently dwarf-silly, with some exposition as to how that ties into the magic system and legends and society.

Quote from: Oreos
When planes are released will the location of hell be able to change in world gen?, and if so will the spires be replaced by portals to the plane of hell?

The planar relationships are determined by the myth.  Hell might not even exist in any sense.  We do need to consider the various practical game effects of different configurations for fort mode especially, so that digging doesn't become entirely boring, at least in whatever passes for vanilla settings or a vanilla family of settings (not that other settings should be boring, but you should be able to make them boring if you want.)

Quote from: Egan_BW
Is it at all disturbing to implement the system that will allow countless tiny bearded people to remember their traumatic experiences for the rest of their lives?

It hasn't gotten to the point where it truly bothers me, but you do get surprised sometimes and then think a bit, when you see some horrible example.  Zach says he doesn't get disturbed by the horrifying events in his own writing, and it's similar, though the procedural aspect can catch you a bit more off-guard.

Quote from: KittyTac
Will we be able to introduce violence to normally non-violent worlds?

That wouldn't be defined by a single slider at the end of the day I think.  The original slider I was thinking of would not allow violent actions, and would try to intercept anything accidentally bad from happening, or outright turn it off as cases come up.  On the other hand, a world could be set to have very peaceful myths and generally be a friendly place, but with the originally-mentioned slider set at normal.  At that point, it'd be more up to you if you want to be disruptive.

Quote from: iceball3
Hey Toady, how often are historical figures pulled from sitepops in worldgen, and in what conditions? For the most part, this question concerns full grown adults being pulled into existence without known lineage, in particular, or is there retroactive lineage generation?

Relating to the first question, what sort of balance do you wish to strike from the following two directions?:
-That frequently pulling adults into existence during worldgen is immersively destructive, due to the sheer amount of individuals who seem to exist with no historical relation to any individuals, and no family to direct the course of their actions in any way.
-That infrequently pulling individuals into existence during worldgen can cause issues in that tightly knit family trees have much more involvement in everything that occurs in the world than anyone else, and that their limited numbers can cause issues if a significant amount of them find vital roles not their calling. That it is also difficult to counter this due to the limitation of the drag on worldgen that excessive historical figures causes.

It happens quite a bit, as far as I can tell.  I haven't run metrics on it.  If it needs to fill a position, it does it, and I think it also tries to keep 2.5% of a site's population historical, or something like that, so not every story is related to positions of power (though they end up assuming them anyway.)  It doesn't try to retroactively generate anything, as this can become a problem of contradictions with all the details floating around, though we've thought about some methods involving population history tracking (so it could at least get the site timings correct and give suddenly elevated people a slight yet consistent backstory.)

Indeed, there is a balance to be struck, and we're trying to land somewhere in the center there.  It would be best to have everybody, but we can't do that, so every answer is somewhat unsatisfactory, but I don't like going to either extreme.  There's also the issue of geographic imbalance; with the cap, historical figures can end up all on one side of the world, unless we pull them out of thin air evenly from sites throughout the world (the 2.5% bit, which favors the sites which are not already oversaturated.)

Quote from: ShinyandKittens
About one-way portals, will there be Necromancer-like raids coming out of them? Kinda like “other realm” stuff. It would be intimidating to see a field of portals opening, summoning a creature, and closing.

Yeah, we are looking forward to it, he he he.  Naturally it can be a bit frustrating to have your fort instakilled by some magical nonsense, but there's a middleground where things can be interesting and challenging, and perhaps a bit unfair sometimes.

Quote from: saharo
1) With the Myth&Magic system, will we see magical auras? Like the Surrounding system, an area might also be associated with a Myth, and exhibit properties of that Myth. Let's say the Myth generation creates a connection between ice, lizardmen and silver (I will call these spheres), and an area highly aligned with this Myth would be colder, show often snow, ice formations, lizard-like creatures, abundant silver veins, silver colored trees, and in general entities associated with those spheres.
2) Again on this aura concept. Will we see the properties of an area modify the value of its surrounding? E.g. a fortress with a shrine to a God: will the influence of that God increase with the prayers? Will we see anything like of building a fortress in an evil biome and trying to create and expand an aura that opposes the evil biome and having the evil biome effects less strong closer to the church?
Always on this, let's say there's an area with a verdant pine forest and full of bears, and the Myth generation creates a connection between a lightning god, bears and pine trees. Given how the area "looks like" that Myth, will the association of this area with this Myth increase over time, and see the place get more lightning storm, flowers that give you a shock if you eat them, then magical creatures of lightning and so on?
3) I see dwarves being more and more creative, telling stories, playing make believe, now even writing fiction books. Will this be expanded to fairytales? And could very famous fairytales have a concrete effect on the world, and be part of some sort of Myth generation during game time? The idea being that fairies inhabit the world of imagination and a strong believe can summon the fairies to the real world. Sufficient people telling the story of the big bad wolf living in a certain cave, has the effect of actually bringing a big bad fairy wolf to that very cave.

1) Yes, this is quite likely, as we've discussed sphere-oriented regions etc. in the past, and this concept can be extended and related to the myth generator etc. along various axes and to whatever mechanic.

2) This is a system dependent question; magic doesn't always need to be contagious in that way, but it is a legitimate fantasy mechanism, so we'll be trying to support it in the underlying way we do sphere-oriented regions generally, as 'change' is one of our guiding themes, the ability to make an area more or less magical if the system permits it (some magic might be permanent in the system.)

3) This is a specific mechanism, but I'm aware of some settings/RPGs that work this way, so technically this kind of thing is on the table.  It's more difficult than the others, though, at least doing it well and getting the frequency and exposition right.

Quote from: Rubik
Having said that Now that we are gonna get assasinations and kidnapping missions in all modes, is it the time to make knocking out and dragging unconscious enemies possible?
If it were, will the also upcoming medical stuff in adv. mode include sleep/alertness inducing herbs to poison enemies?

None of these things are strictly necessary (verbal threats would satisfy the minimum requirement), so offering a timeline is difficult.  The more stuff the better, but we want to try to cover a breadth of ground on this set of releases.

Quote from: ZM5
In regards to conveying information more openly in adventure mode, do you intend making NPCs convey their emotions in more ways than merely stating them? I.e smiling when making a good deal, shrieking in pain when taking damage, or some of the mannerisms that are currently described only in fort mode? Would be fun to encounter the occasional hysterical bandit that loudly screams when lightly tapped. Or the psycho who grins as he/she is getting stabbed.

What about nobles? Would they say what they're nobles of? I often find an issue with various bandit leaders not really stating what they're leaders of, making it hard to tell if they're really relevant enough to bother with, same with other nobles - would be a definite improvement

Non-verbal communication is not a priority right now, but we'd like to do more.  Part of it has to do with them not having emotional reactions to many important places where that would matter, like specific statements, but rather to broad dwarf-mode-style situations.  So there's some background work that needs doing.

A certain subsection of the question of noble affiliation is villain exposition, which we're going to try to find some time to focus on as we do those plots.

Quote from: iceball3
Concerning the more isolated and obscure intelligent species, such as gnomes, pixies, merfolk, satyrs, etc... Will the first pass of the mythgen update have any affect on these specie's organization (roaming tribes, et cetera), and to what extent do you see them attempting any variety of effective and placebo magic?

To what degree do you want a player to be able to direct their scholars to naturalist, druidic magics that can be practiced by these tribes and other tribes (kobolds, animalmen, etc)? Are you looking towards any manner of arbitrary or cultural barrier (through ethics?) to prevent a dwarven fortress from being competent in all worldly magics, or are you content with the dwarves being able to potentially fully develop their knowledge on obscure magics, given the resources?

To my understanding, many rituals will continue to exist in low-myth mode, but clearly not effective, such as priesthood and rituals that work for the mentioned placebo reasons. In higher myth strength worlds, do you see this placebic magic continuing to coexist with functional magical practices between cultures due to incomplete knowledge concerning all worldly magic, or will the effects and proof of magic be overt enough that the standards for believing a type of magic exists end up being raised compared to real life?

We'll want to do some things with the new critters, and this might impact the existing critters, but it's hard to say how far we'll get.  Some of it seems more the purview of the customs/property/etc. stuff, but as we've said with divine law, there could be precursors that come up beforehand.  Every appropriate traditionally-magical raw creature will be on the table for magical additions according to their raw settings, just in the way dwarves are.  So it depends on how much we go in and edit each of those objects, which seems like a good thing to do, and not incredibly difficult once the basic system works.

The myth generator already has some hard barriers (species, bloodline, etc.), and softer barriers are fair as well.  I imagine we can get to a setting that makes all magic systems universal if restrictions are bothersome to some people.  We're certainly hoping to make things like necromancy more horrifying than they currently are to the average society, and that will hopefully come up in fort mode as well.

Yeah, it's perfectly fine for ineffective systems to be created and persist, even in the face of working systems.  However, like you say, evidence of working magic should have some effect on world-view and system adoption rates (or whatever we get to), until the use of proper magic becomes more common.  This doesn't mean that people will necessarily give up their old systems; they might persist together, or people might keep them for reasons of tradition while knowing they aren't effective.  Ideally.  Messing with this will possibly wait until we have some more frameworks for the society in general, but things like "views on <x> magic" are on the table for the first release, and societal change as it concerns magic might also be considered (though societal change is hard without the new culture frameworks from the scenario arc.)

Quote from: Bumber
Is there going to be a way to add some kind of deadline to a mission in the next couple of updates? I hear other players having issues with squads wandering around forever.

It depends on the sort of mission.  They'll bar-hop for artifacts for some months, but if it's a raid or to do with squads with members stuck in the fort, then we'll address the ones on the tracker at some point.  I still have bugs to address for this release, but it depends on what's there and how long they take; there are still crashes for instance.
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ZM5

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #312 on: May 01, 2018, 04:03:37 am »

Thanks for the answers, Toady.

I think what Random_Dragon meant is in regards to mods that have their own "lore" and so on that require specific tokens to always function a certain way, because otherwise they wouldn't make sense - so we'd require tokens restricting certain stuff, i.e so they don't use procedural creatures as pets, don't use magic outside of ones defined by the modder, or so their creation myths are always the same ones that are defined by the modder, rather than procedural ones per world. This is mostly flavor stuff, but I'd imagine there could be gameplay-related issues if more randomness is added that we cannot restrict in the raw files.

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #313 on: May 01, 2018, 04:55:55 am »

So long as there's news coming in every so often about what squads are up to, I not sure there's need for a time limit. It's a quest after all, not a military maneuver. It's the current silent 'are they broken, are they bar hopping?' uncertainty which is the main problem.
(Apologies for treating your question like the start of a suggestion discussion. Kind of seemed like one). :)
It doesn't do much good to know what your dwarves are up to if they end up on a permanent wild goose chase. For example, if an artifact instrument is in the possession of a band of world-traveling performers. A deadline seems like the most practical end condition. Otherwise, we need to make sure the message can actually get to the squad.

From Toady's reply, it sounds like there is, or will be, an automatic deadline of a few months.
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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #314 on: May 01, 2018, 04:59:12 am »

Wait, you said memory doesn't do much, I'm not just imagining things when it seems to help retain more of the "previously viewed but not visible" layout especially when deep in a catacomb or sewer, am I?
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