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Author Topic: Future of the Fortress  (Read 2851564 times)

Inarius

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #525 on: June 29, 2018, 05:05:38 pm »

Is the last release the last release before Magic, or do you plan something else before ?

other question : do you plan to add non-lethal madness ? Something like, talking about strange things, OCD, hallucinations.


I'm sure i have seen someone giving details on the first but i can't find it...
« Last Edit: June 29, 2018, 05:11:17 pm by Inarius »
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Shonai_Dweller

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #526 on: June 29, 2018, 05:45:35 pm »

Is the last release the last release before Magic, or do you plan something else before ?


I'm sure i have seen someone giving details on the first but i can't find it...
Dev notes.
Villainous plots, adventurer pets, tactical party control, armies, prisoner interrogation, assassination, parts of improved sieges (non-trap related parts).

http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html

(Not everything will make it, but there's still another 3 months or so of this phase let).
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Urist McSadist

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #527 on: June 30, 2018, 02:55:58 pm »

Why is it that bridges are indestructible?
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Toady One

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #528 on: June 30, 2018, 03:51:51 pm »

Thanks to Shonai_Dweller, Valtam, Knight Otu, Death Dragon, PatrikLundell, Inarius, FantasticDorf, DG, KittyTac, Miuramir, Inarius, and anybody else who helped to answer questions!

Quote from: zakarum
What kind of interactions with Hillocks can we expect this time around? Can we exile a criminal to the hills (or even out of the kingdom)? Would the hills ask for squads to protect them during a siege, will them be affected by sieges in your fort? Will their citizens try to move to your fort?

We got to the release before FotF rolled around, but just to emphasize, I don't think you can currently do any of these things; a criminal can be exiled, in some sense, but it isn't that forceful.  Hill dwarves might migrate to your fort, but they're just picked up by the regular migration process, and only those you didn't put there.

Quote from: FrankVill
Recently I have been thinking about constellations and stars.
In Fortress mode there are some dwarfs that have a poor spatial sense and in Adventure mode character creation, Spacial Sense is one of the attributes that I can change. So, there is the posibility that npcs and/or our characters could get lost in the world. Have you considered to included a firmament in worldgen to help them knowing the north cardinal or something like this? I believe it would be great for boat release!

For other hand, in a lot of cultures, myths are represented and inmortalized by agrupations of stars, the constellations. Is it posible that one only firmament has various constellation systems, one for each religion? Or same constellation with different meaning by each culture?

And a last cuestion. Maybe a ritual would needs as a main condition the alineation of stars to invoque a great devil and our adventure party must stop them, to priests and worshipers, before the fatidic night. Is this scenario part of your plans?

Yes, we are fans of stars.  Stars have a high chance of figuring into the upcoming myth generator, because they are a very traditional object for explanation (along with day/night, etc.)  This increases their chances of making it into regular play.  I imagine if people can see a set of stars they might think about them, but some might pick different groups for constellations, possibly overlapping, and others might not think in "constellation" terms.  This depends on what the base-line objects end up being; I've handled large amounts of 3D star data for side projects in the past and will possibly do that here if it doesn't end up being a mem/cpu sink.  I also have no problem with people Little Prince'ng about the universe if that's what myth gen cooks up and the map rewrite supports it (ASCII spheres are hard, but they can be little donuts or cylinders or whatever with the basic rewrite we have in mind.)

We had astronomy being related to rituals as part of the notes; whether than ends up being lunar stuff or larger cycles etc. will depend on what we get to, like the rest of it.  We'd certainly like to allow for all sorts of alignment and astrology-type reasoning in the spell systems.

Quote from: squamous
1. How exactly does the FLEEING usage hint work? From what I can tell, it affects the full spectrum of "fear" reactions, so civilized creatures that see you walk nearby while, say, brandishing a weapon (They usually say something like "A weapon? That's alarming!" to signify this) or something similarly not overtly threatening, will use any FLEEING interactions they have, even if said interaction is, say, transforming into a giant demon or something crazy like that. Obviously the vanilla game didn't have plans for this considering the octopus's ink is the only interaction with the FLEEING tag as far as I know, but is this hint meant to be so trigger-happy?

2. What are the plans for the bandit forts and improved necromancer towers, if they are implemented? Will they function essentially as tiny civilizations, demanding tribute and starting wars and such?

3. Will we be getting any other adventure mode crafting functionalities prior to the Big Wait? Like tanning leather/making clothing/milking and butchering animals, stuff like that.

4. Will you be taking another look at semi/megabeasts during the villain arc? Currently if you add the [INTELLIGENT] and [POWER] tokens along with spheres, a megabeast can theoretically assume the role of a god-king in a given civilization. However it is kind of finicky and doesn't always work (as of now they tend to die off almost immediately after assuming rulership) for example. Will this be changed as villain roles become more fleshed out? It might be interesting to face off against an evil empire ruled by a Giant king.

1. It looks like when they are alarmed (which should make them physically flee as well, so it's not incorrect; if they aren't fleeing, that's the issue, and I think that might be the case.) and when they choose to run when in an actual conflict.

2. That part of it is tied into the villain stuff, yeah.  The improvements to the sites themselves are just typical site map improvements, but the villain push will include necromancer and bandit actions along those lines, tied into larger plots and villain networks.

3. I don't anticipate this.  The various inertias haven't been dealt with, though we might get to some animal bits.  But other jobs aren't adv-mode ready.

4. It's on the table as potential villain fodder, but we'll have to see what the first villain pass successfully includes; there could be an unforeseen issue with their tags etc.

Quote from: DoctorDorf
Now that dwarfs dwell on memories, will they at some point get the ability to act on the memories and lessen/reinforce the effect of the worse/better ones?

E.g. a dwarf remembering a dead relative might visit the relative's tomb or memorial and reduce their stress, or a dwarf annoyed at having been without mugs for too long might take matters into their own hands and make a few himself. Perhaps in a similar way a dwarf might search out a few of their masterwork crafts to look at again or engrave their own fond memory on a wall without being told to.

We are closer to that sort of thing now that the memory has a permanent spot in their life.  I'm not sure when we'll be doing our next push on character arcs and related details.

Quote from: Lordfiscus
I think I heard somewhere magic will be a skill like combat or labor skills; will there be zombie/skeleton/thrall mages?

The current myth prototype supports non-skill magics, and I fully anticipate that will continue.  I suppose it will be possible that zombies might have the only magic in a given (somewhat low-magic, somewhat dark) world, once you figure out how a zombie got there in the first place.

Quote from: Mel_Vixen
Now that we get hillocks to spring up around us (and emmiting tribute) will it be possible to (re)distribute stuff so they grow faster or build certain things?

We just don't have that sort of information tracked at this point.  A hope for the later economy stuff, whenever we get worldgen industry turned on, which'll be after the property rewrite.

Quote from: Shonai_Dweller
If I retire my adventurer in a hillocks linked to a player fortress (assuming I become a citizen first, of course) will the adventurer be available for...whatever it is hill dwarves are available to do when I unretire that fortress?

If the adventurer is a citizen and is not a position holder, then it should work, yeah.

Quote from: KittyTac
Have you thought about making a FOTF FAQ?

As Shonai_Dweller (if I recall) mentioned, the dev page is what we have for this currently, and I don't particularly want to maintain a more in-depth document, as time is already thin.  If the many people that answer questions here prefer though, and think there's something that'll really save everybody's time, I can consider it.  The flipside is that some of the questions we get repeated versions of *are* already answered on the dev page, which is linked here in FotF, and an FAQ is only good when it is read and heeded.  So I'm not sure much would change.

Quote from: Beag
1. One thing listed under the benefits of being a wizard's apprentice is magical augmentation. What sort of magical augmentations will be possible besides learning magic? Could the player merge with a magical beast or get magic runes carved on their body?
2. Will obtaining magical mounts be a possibly option for the special companions a player could obtain as a wizard's apprentice?
3. What kinds of new specific opportunities might we be able to ask for as listed in the pre myth and magic update candidate feature list?
4. Will gaining civ-level entry positions unlock more options for things we can do in adventure mode if it is implemented before the myth and magic update and what kinds options do you think we could get if so?

1. Ha ha, I'm not sure.  Body merges, depending on what you mean, are one of the hard problems, so I'm not sure when we'll see that (e.g. spontaneous centaurs are impossible with the systems we have, without a rewrite.)
2. Who knows?  Hopefully we'll get to the regular mounts as planned!
3. By specific opportunities, we were referring to types of reputation, so you'd be able to find treasure hunting or hero-type quests more easily than just randoming soaking up a town's rumors and hoping they have something good locally.
4. It was mostly related to armies, since we don't really have anything else to work with right now.  Running a site along the lines of fort mode just requires a ton of e.g. items we aren't tracking properly in adventure mode.

Quote from: Criperum
With the new myths system will we see religious wars between civs, heresy and inquisition? Religious conflicts inside our fortresses. Official fortress religion and possible attack from our capital government in case if our point of view is different to theirs.

I think PatrikLundell is probably right that we might not see much of this on the first pass; it kind of depends on the bleed-through between the law/status/embark stuff and the magic release, since intra-fort group conflict is a core part of the embark scenario setups, etc., and religions are a natural place to start due to all the setup they'll have from the myth work.

Quote
Quote from: Dwarfu
Will being able to ask residents to leave the fortress include vampires and were-creatures in human form?

Also, is this some kind of legal mandate (such as banishment) or is it just a "get out" kind of thing?
Quote from: FantasticDorf
Do exile ethical reprecussions now utilise the expulsion mechanic in fortress mode to make people leave? i've not had opportunity to try but i am curious to enquire whether its a fine minor detail you implemented and forgot to point out/left behind for players to find. Maybe i was reading too much into it perhaps.

Yeah, you can ask anybody to leave, if they aren't a noble and their family is in order (there's at least one bug there.)

It's not quite a formal banishment (though we did think about the "exile" ethics and so forth but decided against linking anything up formally, as those ethics were all tied to criminal justice and punishment for bad acts, which this isn't necessarily), but they won't return as migrants without you asking for them, because they know what players can do with bridges when displeased.  Once we have the status/law/customs framework, we'll be in a much better position to say exactly what you are doing here and why you have the power to do so (or don't have the power, as the case may be for a wider class of dwarves at that time, depending on the embark setup, though they will still fear the bridge and might act accordingly.)

Quote from: ZM5
Do you plan on fixing dwarves ability to form relationships this cycle, or do you think you'll end up replacing it with something more complex further down the line? I've noticed it still kinda seems like even with fort citizens socializing a lot, you very rarely get marriages, grudges and the like.

I recall asking this last time (maybe?  it gets confusing between fotf and email and everything else), and if somebody answered I missed it; is this still an issue?  I've had lovers and marriages among the starting 7 in my test forts in the last some versions, and there is more socializing now.  Is there a bug report with saves associated to a newer release?  I suppose I could check, but I'm working on FotF answers right now, heh.

I imagine relationships will get more complicated, as things tend to, but I don't have particular plans for them in the near-term.

Quote from: Ggobs
In the Development tab there's a line "better necromancer towers'
I was curious what do you have planned for them?
thx

Inarius said it'd be a part of a larger generic procedural system for castles/towers/forts, which is correct.  Right now the zombies are all jammed up in like one room with all the apprentices and books; it won't take much of a system to improve that.  As a start, it would be nice to make the locations more adventurely, somewhat like those mossy pyramids we used to have, but with a broader set of structures.  Ideally, it would make more sense with their overall function, but I'm not sure I'm going to invest a lot in that before the necromancers get blown wide open with the magic stuff.  But I'd like to do some improvements parallel to the castle and bandit stuff.

Quote
Quote from: Killermartian
<from dev: Combat styles : Ability to create new moves/styles when highly skilled>

Do you have any plans as to how you will accomplish this?
Quote from: iceball3
In particular, do you suppose the combat styles noted are a series of actions like how the current version largely supports Kisat Dur as a combat style, or will these be more particular actions?
Do you anticipate further development in this direction to come before or after the next pass of fatigue/pain/organ injury reworks? Just asking as making certain injuries more or less significant can have an affect on what constitute a good combat maneuver (as punching people's livers right now does not do anything presently, for example).

Yeah, we had a starting seed of it in the original Armok, with the styles/stances/moves stuff, and once you are skilled enough, it would be cool to allow you to innovate on the forms you currently know.  I don't have a specific interface or anything planned out at this point, and it would need to be metered a bit, but you might be able to, say, combine two stances, using bonuses from each, and add a modifier, provided you do whatever 'research' or practice is required.  Then the idea was that you'd be able to teach others.  This extends to the regular research system somewhat, and the musical/dance forms etc.  Ideally we'd get it all the way out to job skills and so forth over time, as that becomes linked with knowledge/libraries/etc.  It would be cool to have different sorts of carpentry practices and all that, though this involves a lot of research (much of which is up on suggestions, in various forms, or in the notes.)

I'm not sure about the order between combat and injuries; kind of depends on what adventure medical involves, that sort of thing.  Livers, as you say, might be generally addressed before we do anything with combat styles.

Quote from: Mel_Vixen
Question about messengers: When they are out on theyr mission and encounter hostiles (Armies, undead, titans, nighcreatures) will they report those? I imagine theyr coding will them make them walk by but on the returntrip (given that they are alive) will they tell you the news?

They don't collect rumors now, and in terms of the safety of your fortress, there isn't currently a point, as the armies move as fast as they do.  We were hoping to work on this a bit (it's one of the pre-magic candidates), slowing down larger groups a bit and giving your outside sites a chance to participate, enough for you to make some decisions.  There's always the issue of just getting your units to the edge of the map, though, if you want to send a squad out, since that usually takes some days on the world map.  We might find ourselves just having armies opposed to your fortress operate under more and more artificial conditions, which isn't a problem until it starts to cascade throughout the world.

Quote from: Inarius
I have no problem imagining magic based on stress. Or suffering and pain.
Is this something you think about as a possible base for magic ?

Yeah, emotional information in general was a candidate for queries in the interaction system (or whatever we end up with.)  There are issues with this in both modes in terms of how emotions/stress are produced and managed and exposed to the player, so I'm not sure if it'll work without some addition directed work there.

Quote from: Eric Blank
Can we send parents and children off to the hillocks so we dont have to put up with them?

If we keep one parent behind, can we then arrange visits to their family by sending them off temporarily so they dont get all freaked out about not seeing them for too long?

Can we also send away peoples pets and unwanted livestock?

If i embark on a site with intelligent residents like animal people in the caverns or a cave or camp occupied by something other than kobolds, can i forcibly relocate them too?

On that front, do we have any say in who is allowed to settle in our hillocks sites? Would there be repercussions, like do other civs recognize evicting their diplomats or nobles as a potential insult to them? Does this count if we evict the populations of sites we conquered/forced to submit to our rule? Separately from the act of attacking and subjugating the site, obviously.

We can ask that poetry troupe we granted residency to to get lost right?

It doesn't allow for family separation.  They are supposed to take their pets, but I'm not sure if it works.

You can only ask your own citizens to leave.  The question of other intelligent outside groups already living on your site is kind of a mess, has been forever, and I'm not sure when we'll approach it.

You don't set the rules for hillocks right now, but you should be able to in the future, though that might be the law/property/etc. future rather than the near future.  There could be a bit more for this cycle though, as the feature set expands.

Hmm, I have no idea if you can evict residents.  It might trip up on the residency check but I'm not sure.  Ideally, you should be able to do it.
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Toady One

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #529 on: June 30, 2018, 03:52:14 pm »

Quote from: Mort Stroodle
1. You've mentioned sphere-associated regions replacing good and evil regions. Can we expect ALL of the existing spheres to be represented in there (not in the same world necessarily, but all in the pool that the game chooses sphere regions from)? Some seem obvious like death-associated regions having the current evil region effects of reanimation or other nasty weather, some spheres could lead to cool things like dream-associated oceans, but some spheres don't seem to make as much sense for this system. A forest associated with "oaths" or a desert associated with "rumors" are hard to come up with magical or otherwise interesting effects for. Can we expect less interesting spheres to be omitted? Or do you guys think you're creative enough to be able to come up with interesting enough effects for all of them?

2. On a similar note, are some magical artifacts going to be similarly sphere associated? Will it be possible to have a revelry-associated magical scepter, or an agriculture-associated armor stand, for example? There's a whole bunch of spheres so it seems crazy-ambitious to try and come up with world region and artifact effects for all of them.

3. You've talked about changing the underworld into something completely different on a per-world basis, based on procedural myth stuff. Are there plans to try to preserve the "digging too deep" ending of the game between worlds in spite of this? I always kind of liked playing devil's minesweeper.

4. Since there are going to be new origin myths for different species, where does that leave the relationship between goblins and demons? Are the narratives just going to be twisted to fit the current status quo (ex: goblins were created when the gods cursed the dwarves, then a demon grew from the primordial fungus pits and enslaved the goblins) or is it going to be more dynamic, where goblins might not have had a demon master at all depending on how they came to be? If demons aren't necessarily a package deal with goblin civs anymore, might intelligent demons be able to manifest in the normal world during mythgen of certain worlds through some other means?

5. Since regions and magical systems are now going to change dynamically over time, is the myths update going to include a way to have a world re-enter world-gen after you finish a fort, in order to generate more history before playing again? Seems like a lot of effort to make things dynamic is going to waste if the average playtime on a single world doesn't last long enough to see those effects progress much. It would also be cool to see how wars and civilizations change over the long term based on the actions you made in your fort.

6. You've talked about players having to make decisions about whether they want to use an artifact, given the harmful side effects they have, like a staff of fire that pulls your fortress closer to the fire plane and causes everything to light on fire. How do you plan to communicate information about their uses and risks to the player? In some cases where the downsides aren't too horrible and it's not too hard to figure out what's going on, just making the player experiment and try using it could be fun, but the stronger the negative effects are and bigger the consequences, the less likely players will risk it at all. It's not worth playing with the Flaming Obsidian Mug of Lebesnóton if there's a chance it might fill your fortress with magma because you don't know what it does in advance.

7. How might players actually use magic in fortress mode? You've shown screenshots of the myth gen describing how dwarves could sing or speak a word or whatever to make some kind of magic happen, but right now we can't force a dwarf to sing or speak a word on command in fort mode. Will we be able to control when and where a particular dwarf uses a particular kind of magic? If some magic artifacts are clothing, will we get functionality to force a non-milita dwarf to wear a particular piece of clothing as well?

8. You've talked about religious sects forming in your fort and demanding certain things, like nobles. Is this system going to be integrated with temples or magic? I'm imaging a system where building a grand, high value cathedral for a cult will increase the success of their worshiping and rituals, improving your relations with a deity, which in turn could grant you strange moods to produce magical artifacts, blessings of good harvest/success in battle or other such benefits.

9. Similar note, right now dwarves can worship megabeasts like gods, presumably to appease them so they chill out and stop destroying everybody’s cities. This doesn’t actually do anything at the moment though. Might this relationship be expanded upon? Do you think we might actually be able to keep forgotten beasts at bay by worshiping them? Or maybe even convince them to attack your fort’s enemies? Or do you guys like the one-sided worship as it stands? It is kind of fun to think of dwarves desperately trying to appease the eight-legged bismuth porcupine that doesn’t care about what the dwarves are doing at all, and just wants to kill everything.

10. You’ve mentioned how worlds without magic will still have origin stories, they would just be fictional. Does this mean that worlds which DO have magic might also have fictional elements to their myths? Such as false gods, magical rites which do nothing, artifacts which are said to have certain magic effects but actually do nothing, etc. Would the players have an easy way to distinguish between fake magic and real magic, or would experimentation be necessary?

(PatrikLundell had a reasoned perspective on all of these.  Adding more thoughts below.)

1. I doubt we'll get full sphere-effect coverage on the first pass, but at the same time, I think a forest of oaths and a desert of rumors are the more interesting of the examples, and there are many ways those can be realized, even just using the current systems, though it'd be preferable to have more systems in place (at least for oaths; rumors have a good-enough system for this -- even if the trees just whispered a random rumor from the world periodically, that would be something and quite a powerful place to camp a spy, or an entire 'listening post')

2. Same here; and yeah, some are definitely more ambitious than others.  At the same time, having some sort of revelry artifact that made your fort into Party Central would be pretty cool, and there could be a few directed pushes here and there to make fortress artifacts more specifically interesting (and not always about killing things or defense or raw industry.)

3. Digging should certainly be interesting; I'm not sure it'll always be a similar sort of thing with a grand and sudden disaster though.  The most Vanilla worlds might preserve the entire current setup, though we have not at all set in stone what "most Vanilla" means.  It has dwarves.  We know it has dwarves.

4. The goblin-demon relationship is a good candidate for a raw-defined, vanilla setup.  The whole concept of 'demon' will float as the sliders move; we've made some semantic charts for 'demon', 'fairy', 'angel', 'titan', 'god', 'force', 'spirit', etc., and we're trying not to be beholden to English entirely when assigning categories to supernatural creatures, as that can be really limiting.  This might lead to a bit of exposition on a new word that is central to a given world, and hopefully that on its own won't be a stretch; huge vocabulary drops are rough, but a crucial new category or two isn't so bad.  And oftentimes, the English words will be sufficient; a variant of 'titan' will often be applied to any large-enough pre-god race, for example, as those are common associations for that word.  Small pre-god races can't easily be called titans though; you could apply a diminutive to them, like...  "The Little Titans", heh, but that doesn't always work so well.  Or you can use "fairy", as they have the 'smaller' and 'a bit apart from traditional pantheons' associations that work well enough.  Failing that, the "<random word>s", which it goes on to describe a bit.  I imagine there will be lots of metrics and concept lists and all that to try and get the best output we can.

5. It has already been mentioned how it is hard to re-enter worldgen.  I just wanted to acknowledge that there is a sort of "but we'll never experience the End Times, 500 years away!" bit here that can be a bit frustrating.  An easier short-term solution is to have a world gen setting that prefers to place the play start date near crucial times on the myth calendar; this only works for the first batch of play-throughs in that world of course, before things settle down again (or the world is annihilated forever.)  But the problem of restarting worldgen is not an easy one; it's clearly the best way to get certain kinds of layered pay-offs, but it's not easy, especially when the best pay-offs come specifically from recognizing the information which would be the sort that needs to be put back in the bag, as it were.

6. Yeah, exposition in general is a core problem with this release.  We don't want any undeserved instadeath triggers, and if blatant expository paragraphs and giant warning windows are the only way to pull it off in a given case, we'll go with that.  But yeah, research is also possible here.  There is a certain element of Acts of Desperation we'd also be happy with, in a fort that is already falling especially, as that'll have a pleasant reverberation to future playthroughs in that world, even if the fort itself is a smouldering instadeath crater with demons buried underneath.

7. I expect this will be as PatrikLundell suggests; buildings work as usual, low-level atoms like 'sing'/'gesture' etc. would just be part of the ritual which is performed automatically (adv. mode is another matter -- I expect a lot of that will also be automatically, but only when it becomes more annoying and less fun, a line I'm not sure will be obvious every time.)  There are some issues that have been raised in the past, particularly as it relates to clothing and also ammo/reagents; unsurprisingly, these are the things that DF already handles poorly (uniforms and bolts, respectively.)  We'll just have to generally improve this stuff as/before it becomes cumbersome.

8. Yeah, I expect this'll be how it works -- as PatrikLundell said, the proper full integration of fortress groups is set for a later-than-magic release, but certain religious/magical aspects might find their way in.

9. The current system is amusing, but we wouldn't mind expanding it.  Not sure what'll happen though.

10. I think PatrikLundell's thoughts here are sufficient; the only thing I have to add is that it's actually hard for us to handle certain types of falsehoods now, due to how the rumor system is set up, so there might be practical implementation difficulties here and there.

Quote from: Fatace
1. When the new Magic System comes out, will it be customiseable for modders to add other magic related things with raws?

3. If we have a Werebeast in our fort and send them out to a hillock, will they eventually worm their way back to fight or cause problems in the hillocks?

1. Yeah.  The backbone of the current magic system, the interactions, are in the raws now, and that's not going to change.  The procedural stuff will also be text-file directed.  As with the procedural creatures, certain specific new cases (who knows which) might remain hard-coded as they grow into maturity, but we're intentionally trying to keep that from happening wherever possible, making sure everything 'vanilla' can be shut off (which is a requirement for the no-magic slider position at the very least), and thinking about formats which allow people to inject their own guiding data into the procedures with varying degrees of vagueness.

3. I have no idea if they'd be selected as a monster invader; their civilized status might preclude that?  I don't think they'll return as a general migrant, as I understand it.

Quote from: Beag
1. One possible magic effect that has been mentioned is mind control. When it comes to player adventurers being mind controlled how will the loss of player control be handled? Will the player get to watch as the magic user controls their body?
2. Will there be cases of non-complete mind influencing magic where the magic user suggests for a person to do something? If so, if a player adventurer is subjected to it how will the partial loss of control be handled? What mechanics will be in place to ensure they obey the non-dominating mind magic?
3. Once the myth and magic update starts being released will there be more types of weaknesses for night creatures, cursed individuals and corrupted magic users? Currently were beasts are weak to certain metal weapons. Will stuff like holy symbols, natural terrain features and certain times of day be possible types of weaknesses?
4. Will types of curses be generated at myth gen or when the curse is given? Will generated curses have their weaknesses set on generation or will the weaknesses vary from curse to curse within the same type of curse?

1. It's too early to say.  Speculating, the duration of the effect would be key here.  Not good to retire the adventurer if it's a ten-second effect, almost required to retire the adventurer if it's a life-long effect (even if it can be cancelled somehow later.)
2. It's on the effect list (it's a common dnd thing, for example), but we haven't established rules for how it might work or if it'll be in on the first pass.  Some rules are easier to enforce than others (direction of movement or restricted locations, for example; these are simple, along with prohibitions on speech, etc.), and we can always just use the rules we can enforce, and try to increase that list as methods are conceived of.
3. It is part of the night creature hunting role; it'll still be on that timetable, but the two things could end up being related, yeah.
4. Could be either way, and sometimes it's the same thing.  I'm not sure about internal variation; typically that sort of thing is more annoying to do, but it'd be nice to have a framework that supports it.

Quote from: iceball3
As worlds become increasingly procedural, how do you see greater geological formations being impacted? Will any number of worldly influences cause the existence of more esoteric layer stones, for example, or will the procedural occurrences of the world make our planets particularly "Earthen" in all it's lands? Assuming players do not mod in bedrock formations that would otherwise make the world different, of course.

In the event that stone layers and similar mineral formations occur that are not what you would see in real life, how do you see handling it? Will stone layers be created by probable cause (such the present known terrestrial and extraterrestrial formations, as well as preset fictional minerals reasonably expected to be caused by things that influence stone layers in a consistent way during mythgen or otherwise), or will there be a subcategory of rare procedural minerals that are generated in tandem with whatever could influence it?
An example of the first case of the second question: Slade. In particular, it forms as a mineral layer as a result (or related to) the existence of air pockets beneath the crust.
That makes me think of another question.
Do you think slade would be a subject of interest for our magic-researches to be in the post mythgen eras? Or is slade in particular intended to be completely unapproachable, resistant to any mortal effort to glean useful information from it?

Also, at the end of the day, does your vision of slade have it as being truly indestructible? Specifically, in dis-regard to reachable game states, would there be a force in the universe that can damage or otherwise handle slade? This is more of a lore question, as the question of whether dwarves can do it might lead to my favorite slade-carving maybe-glitches being fixed, hehe

I suspect things will start to become more otherworldly if you don't have your sliders rescuing you from added strangeness; there are different fantasy takes on this.  Some settings are very earth-like (and often said to be an ancient or future Earth), others have localized or a special subset of oddities but are still earthish, and others are only earth-like in certain broad ways (vegetation, humanoids, etc., more like science fiction at that point.)  We hope to attain this range on the first pass; the hard part was the specific earth-like flora/fauna/etc, and that's already done in the raws to a great extent, thankfully.  The other hard part is the map rewrite, which will allow us to deviate considerably in the overall geometry.

Miuramir and KittyTac covered minerals/layers more or less.  A raw-defined mineral like slade can be given a creation story consistent with its properties.  If there are templates for mineral classes, they'll be allowed to have more varied origins (we currently only have this partially, in hard-coded form, with the vault materials.)

As for the lore of the most Vanilla possible universe, I'm not entire certain; I imagine slade to be indestructible, in mundane terms, but clearly demons can shape it and thrust it about.  I imagine it and adamantine would have some complex relationship.  Are these numbers set up so processed (not raw) adamantine can bend slade but they both fracture at the same time, when tremendous force is applied?

Quote from: Urist McVoyager
Were the issues with local administrations abandoning the sites we conquer potentially caused by a skills issue, like the local administrators just not having enough discipline skill to stick it out with the threat of insurrections brewing? If so, will we see that facet kept, where cowardly administrations might actually abandon their holdings and come crying back to us with excuses for leaving?

No, it was a much more simple calculation everybody uses for the insurrection balance-of-power check.  Personalities didn't enter into those raw numbers at all, as I recollect.  Not sure what it'll look like when we get back to it.

Quote from: Su
will you be fixing insurrections this release cycle, or do you plan to return to them some time after myth and magic?

I'm not strictly anticipating it, but it depends on various factors (villains, further army work, etc.)  The main issue is that you can't yet order large blobs of hill dwarves around, so using the current code, occupation by your fort's own forces is almost impossible, over most sites -- it's further exacerbated because the insurrection code doesn't care about skill or equipment yet.  But if it becomes an easier-to-implement, fun, surmountable challenge, as we add other things, we can have another look.

Quote from: Charizard
Do you use a profiler to find performance problems?

On Linux, previously, though I never really figured out how to get much actionable information out of the charts.  Now that's a moot point, as I'm laproscopically operating Linux through a tiny virtual machine window that has enough trouble with a regular compile.

Last time I tried something on Windows I couldn't figure out how to turn it off during the loading of a save (rather than profiling from start to finish), and it couldn't load a save without crashing.  If the latest MSVC one is available on Community, I haven't tried it yet.

Quote from: Death Dragon
What is the difference between "vassal" sites and "economically linked" sites from a gameplay point of view? Economically linked ones are the ones that peacefully align themselves to you, right? Will they have the same functions and uses as normal vassal sites or do you plan on making them more different, giving them other uses or limiting them in their uses compared to vassals?

Did you already decide what you'll work on in this coming month? Will there be more improving/fixing/tweaking of the site administration stuff for now or will you jump straight to one of the next things (villains/adventure mode parties/mounts/etc)?

Did you and your brother come closer to a conclusion about how you'll handle mounts in the game? There were some interesting game design questions in the past about the implementation of mounts and because you said they are potentially one of the next things being worked on I was wondering if you have a better idea of what you want to do with them by now. For example: How to balance player control vs the animal having its own mind and also whether mounts will come to fort mode before the big wait or adventure mode only for now? If nothing changed in regards to the design of mounts, just answer "nope".

Vassal isn't really used right now, but it's in place for when you have, say, a few barons under your fort's count.  Once you get a baron, it changes the market-linked ones to be direct holdings.  They are still market-linked, which is the green link from the map export in legends mode, and is meant to reflect realities of the economy rather than what the nobles think is going on.  I think there will be differences once we have more information stored, especially economically and in terms of how e.g. fairs work.

The report tomorrow should have the plans for next time.

Mounts.  Nope, nothing new to report.  Still looking forward to it.

Quote from: FantasticDorf
Toady, I believe it was mentioned somewhere on the changelog that you implemented a fix to address county titles not upgrading themselves according to nobles, are you still satisfied with the active jobs quota for county title "level up" and state of the county system in general now that other civilization factors are coming into play or is this currently pending your attention later on in development? Your thoughts on the matter would be interesting

I'm not satisfied at all with the baron/holdings triggers generally, since there is no economy, but I'll have to live with what we have for now.  Whether or not you get a title should be a completely political matter between your fort and the monarch, which respects the economy but where that perhaps has little to do with a particular elevation.

Quote from: pikachu17
What happens if during a raid, someone holding an artifact dies, either one of your soldiers or someone of the raided place?
Also, when you explore a cave or lair, they don't seem to find dragons and other megabeasts. Why?

It looks like the artifacts just get marked as lost on site, which should let questers find them, and will also place them in a random location if an player adventurer swings by.

No idea on the dragons.  It doesn't look like there are e.g. civilization requirements in the code when it goes through and checks for defenders.  Could be anything.

Quote from: Witty
Right now, all subterranean water sources are huge pools of stagnant water. With the underground rewrite that's been hinted to occur around the mythgen update, will we see a return of flowing underground cave rivers?

One of the core requirements of the map rewrite is to support underground cave rivers; taking the river idea from the surface and generalizing those structures so they work on more localized layers (I'll basically be using something like manifolds here, where there can be a rich non-uniform globe/universe-spanning structure connecting standard local 3D play areas in a seamless way; spherical/nonzero curvature shapes continue to be annoying, whereas flat spaces with interesting topology will be possible.)  This should also allow us to not load the entire underground column no matter where you are, though we do have the eternal battle with gravity there to sort out (falling into the unloaded.)  So once the map rewrite is a go, you'll have, hmm, at a minimum I'd expect underground rivers, neat not-always-layer underground bits, cylinder wrap-around worlds, multiple cameras, and some kind of planar travel?  I'm probably forgetting some obvious freebies.  The basic rewrite of the old code is hard, scooping up all the free stuff afterward is just fun and not so difficult, if I'm correct.  But the hard part is hard.  Hmm, not hard.  A slog.  A gigantic gigantic slog.  Like "search in files for <x>".  10000 found.  Okay.  Same as the z-coordinate.

Quote from: scourge728
What is the range for "nearby" sites joining you?

It was supposed to be a day's walk, like 9 world tiles or so.  But somebody already had one at three days away?  So it seems buggy.

Quote from: JesterHell696
How mod-able do you intend the first pass of the myth gen and magic to be?

I ask because in the suggestion forums it was suggested that the first pass was going to be less/un mod-able.

I know that what is intended might not make the finale cut but as someone with a desire to mod in a specific magic system (Dominions 4) I'm really curious as to what the "goal" is in term of mod-ability.

...

I only hope there is enough player control to not be force to accept a magic system we don't like.

Shonai_Dweller had lots of relevant quotes.  I just wanted to emphasize that I don't think this'll be a problem.  Magic systems will go through a few text-file filters, and the magic systems will also be generated into a text-file compatible format (as they are currently with necromancers etc., but with more exposed text to control it), so you can create any system that's supported manually and turn off anything else.  The open questions are more along the lines of how closely we can link a player-authored magic system into a generated mythologies (if the player in such a case still wants one), and whether those mythologies can be made to (pretend to) produce the system in some coherent way, and on the other hand, whether a fixed player mythology can be put at the front end and then be used to generate different but consistent magic systems.  It would be ideal if each 'chronological' piece of the process could be made as authored or as generated as desired.  Minus a bit of coherence, I think that'll be straightforward enough to allow.

This certainly isn't a case where you'll have to live with our bogeyman and forgotten beasts again, though you'll of course be able to crank the sliders and do that too.  As stated above, certain bits might still be hard-coded as we sort them out, but you'll be able to turn them off, if they are related to the magic slider at the very least.

Quote from: JesterHell696
Do you think dynamic combination of magic will be possible with magic, an example being mixing water and fire magic on the fly to create steam or fire and earth to create magma or would such combinations need to be predefined?

Something needs to be defined somewhere; what the atoms are is up to the system.  If we rely on chemistry etc. out in the typical game mechanics, we'll have the things we current have (magma and water produces steam and obsidian etc), plus anything that is explicitly added.  If the system uses predefined conceptual nodes, like the spheres, then they can hop around the friend/parent/child/opposition relationships they have, and spell effects might be related to that.  So, as a potential example, a light effect might miscast into a (generated) sun effect, which could be very bad -- I'm not sure what we'll have in this first pass, but this is the sort of thing that should be natural for it to do, as sphere-effect coverage grows.  There's also a cross-over zone with stuff like the "sphere" regions; if a region is interacted with and its attached symbols change, then its properties might shift dynamically.

We don't currently have a (possibly generated?) sphere/concept math, like <sphere:earth> + <sphere:water> =e.g.= <sphere:muck>, but this sort of thing is possible and might come in with alchemy.  There are various ways this can be done, and we've toyed around with a few of them in side projects.  Not all ~120 spheres need to be represented; it could pick, say, 8 sufficiently "far apart" spheres at random, and then use whatever mixing system and generic sphere-effect generators to handle situations, with coverage and possibilities being increased as we add effects and conceptual linkages.

My anticipation now is that we'll have some of this to start, a few classes of generated system with this kind of behavior, and then it will improve and broaden over time.

Quote from: Shonai_Dweller
Famous historical warriors stop using their weapons the moment they name (and decorate) them. Is this intended (It's now hanging on a wall never to be used), something unfinished for later expansion, or a bug? It's kind of odd having all these legendary single kill weapons around. Also worldwide artifact production from all races (except dwarves in player fortresses) stops after initial worldgen. I reported it as a bug, but is it?

Yeah, as Inarius says, it's kind of somewhere between unfinished and a bug.  The item moves to a special inventory structure, and the game doesn't know how to handle that right now, but it should be added.

Artifact production stopping isn't teeeechnically a bug, but I don't mind it being treated like one.  We don't have the industry or economy or anything, so we're not 100% perfect on having the proper industries and so forth picked, once worldgen stops (where we do sim more of this stuff), but there's enough information to wing it, and it's an important part of the game.

Quote from: Inarius
do you plan to add non-lethal madness ? Something like, talking about strange things, OCD, hallucinations.

Yeah, we are all for modeling personalities and other effects of various kinds.  No idea exactly when.  It seems more likely now that the first behavior along these lines will be magical rather than strictly psychological.

Quote from: Urist McSadist
Why is it that bridges are indestructible?

This is more than a decade in the past, so I'm not really sure anymore, and it depends on the context.  For invaders, for example, it would inhibit their continued invasion.  If you mean flammability or something, then the game is generally bad that way I think, and it might also relate to just how weird bridges were vs. fluids in the 2D version.
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Dwarfu

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #530 on: June 30, 2018, 04:37:40 pm »

...because they know what players can do with bridges when displeased.

haha!
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Putnam

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #531 on: June 30, 2018, 04:48:13 pm »

Are these numbers set up so processed (not raw) adamantine can bend slade but they both fracture at the same time, when tremendous force is applied?

Yes, though it won't bend by much. Also, unlike adamantine, slade can be permanently deformed without breaking, i.e. you can justifiably use adamantine tools to cold-shape slade.

PatrikLundell

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #532 on: July 01, 2018, 04:12:10 am »

:
Quote from: ZM5
Do you plan on fixing dwarves ability to form relationships this cycle, or do you think you'll end up replacing it with something more complex further down the line? I've noticed it still kinda seems like even with fort citizens socializing a lot, you very rarely get marriages, grudges and the like.

I recall asking this last time (maybe?  it gets confusing between fotf and email and everything else), and if somebody answered I missed it; is this still an issue?  I've had lovers and marriages among the starting 7 in my test forts in the last some versions, and there is more socializing now.  Is there a bug report with saves associated to a newer release?  I suppose I could check, but I'm working on FotF answers right now, heh.

I imagine relationships will get more complicated, as things tend to, but I don't have particular plans for them in the near-term.
:
I believe this is still an issue, unless you've done something I've missed since 0.44.05.
- The starting 7 are poor test subjects because they start out with high relations. Most are friends with most of the others, so they've got a significant head start compared to migrants. Thus, they've got a lot shorter relations distance to go. They also aren't affected by the next point initially.
- The other issue is a scale one, and also ties into failures to satisfy social needs: Socializing seems to be random, i.e. a dorf socializes with whomever they happen to end up standing close to in the tavern, rather than cross to the other side to seek out friends and family. Since taverns tend to be full of visitors, this means most of the socializing "points" are spent on visitors who'll then move out (in particular with the fairly recent fixed visitor code), rather than with other citizens (and since citizens typically spend much time working, they're not spending all their time in the tavern, like visitors do).

Nuptial encouragement suites work, and forumites have reported sectioning of the fortress such that the dorfs are split into sub groups that are burrowed together also works.

What I think is needed for larger fortresses to work socially is some kind of additional social target selection, such that dorfs excuse themselves from strangers to move over to friends and family to some extent, as well as to do the same with people they have had some exposure to and "think" might make a good friend or lover/partner, and to favor fellow citizens/residents over visitors to a lesser extent. Avoiding those they have grudges against to some extent (unless they value arguing higher than the annoyance over dealing with a detestable dorf) might also make sense.
Thus, I think there's a socializing layer missing currently, but tweaking one (when implemented) may take a number of attempts.
Personality traits might affect such a process if the system is fancy: a novelty seeker who likes cultural differences ought to seek out visitors to a larger extent than one suffering from crippling shyness, and thus almost never talks with anyone they don't know (which should be parents and and siblings, to a large extent).

The issue can be seen fairly clearly in fortress raised children, who frequently have no relations to each other of most of the other citizens, but can have a long list of visitor plus one or two fortress members on their relations list.
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iceball3

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #533 on: July 01, 2018, 05:38:23 am »

Thanks for the answers, Toady!
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scourge728

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #534 on: July 01, 2018, 10:54:03 am »

...because they know what players can do with bridges when displeased.
I'm just going to sig this

Max™

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #535 on: July 02, 2018, 02:39:15 am »

Mmmmm, carpentry, just finished my second dovetailed box and a marking gauge to go with the saws and planes and chisels I never stop tinkering with.

Mounts are also exciting... wait... carpentry+mount=dwarves scooting around on wooden velocipedes and scooters before slamming into walls... fund it.
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JesterHell696

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #536 on: July 02, 2018, 05:38:48 am »

Thanks for answers to both my questions Toady, Glad you understood the intent behind my second question even though I didn't explain it well.
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"The long-term goal is to create a fantasy world simulator in which it is possible to take part in a rich history, occupying a variety of roles through the course of several games." Bay 12 DF development page

"My stance is that Dwarf Fortress is first and foremost a simulation and that balance is a secondary objective that is always secondary to it being a simulation while at the same time cannot be ignored completely." -Neonivek

zakarum

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #537 on: July 02, 2018, 10:10:46 am »

Thanks for the answers Toady!

Right now you are moving to villain stuff, but I don't know if you are still going to look over the site interactions and since one thing relates to one another, well...

1. As your fort get more integrated in the world, how do hillocks interact with the surrounding biome right now (and in the future)? Will settling in an evil biome cause the hillocks that grow around your fort to have an undead/syndrome problem? Could they be overrun by the undead and end up with an invasion of your fort? Will you be able to send troops there to guard/fend off undead, beasts and such? Do sending troops there right now do anything?

2. Tying to the previous question, will we be able to "refuse" hillocks settlements? And if that's the case, I imagine the system would work as charts, with migrants (or citizens of your fort) asking for a chart to settle a land nearby. You could deny them because it's too dangerous, for example. How would the current count/barony system tie with the fact that hillock might not pop up because you denied them/place is too remote?

3. Conversely, how do/will hillocks interact with invaders? Could a necromancer rampage through the hillocks to try and raise a larger army to invade you? Would you be able to send patrols to try and intercept the necromancer before it snowballs in a huge army of the undead?

4. You are now moving to the "villain role", though I'm not sure this is "individual" (as in adventurer is a bad guy) or generic (goblins, "large scale bad guys"). Tied into that is slavery in the dev page, though only mentioned 3 times. Slaves right now are a rare occasion and only happen during site destruction in world gen. Since we have more assets now (hillocks) than just the fort itself, will that shift the paradigm of invaders to relate to all that? Let me give a few examples. Right now all invaders want your complete destruction, but it would make more sense for them to want your partial destruction just for their own gain.

4.1 It's pretty easy to lock yourself right now and wait for a siege to pass (ignoring future tunneling units), but wouldn't the invading army raid/plunder the hillocks while you hide (which would also make the invasion last longer, since they have supplies)? Could a siege be done for specifically to gather slaves/undead without losing a lot of lives from the invading force while they force the army (you) to be shut in your fort or occasionally harass you if you try to stray too far away from the fort?

4.2 Tying to 4.1, what kind of problems would this cause for the player? Refugees you can't deny/or deny with consequences? The need to divert resources to reconstruct hillocks? Demotion from duke/barony status (can that even happen?)? Overall anger and sadness in your fort population by the destruction caused in their neighbors or isolation of being locked in the fort?

4.3 Will invaders ever attack you not only aiming for your total destruction? Could it be that they just want to carry off the riches they can and set out? Would some slavers drive by and just take your citizens then go off?

4.4 With the upcoming villain stuff, will invaders use hillocks citizens to try and get to you? Could they occupy a site and hold it for ransom and convince a citizen to come to your fort to, let's say, pull the bridge lever when they come?

5. Will the role of "raider" get in this release? (In the sense of temporary forces, either outlaws or enemies, that come to take people or valuables, causing death and destruction but not enough to end the game)

6. Finally, are there respective plans for the stuff I asked in any arc, if it's not coming in the current cycle of hillock/villains?


Thanks Toady
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Criperum

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #538 on: July 02, 2018, 10:44:14 am »

I have a question about FotF itself. If there was an answer on the question from one of the guys from forum and Toady just adds some thoughts about it but not answering from the beginning can the original answer be posted in FotF along with Toady's answer or at least postlinked?
« Last Edit: July 02, 2018, 02:16:09 pm by Criperum »
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Rockphed

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #539 on: July 02, 2018, 10:53:18 am »

Quote from: Mort Stroodle
7. How might players actually use magic in fortress mode? You've shown screenshots of the myth gen describing how dwarves could sing or speak a word or whatever to make some kind of magic happen, but right now we can't force a dwarf to sing or speak a word on command in fort mode. Will we be able to control when and where a particular dwarf uses a particular kind of magic? If some magic artifacts are clothing, will we get functionality to force a non-milita dwarf to wear a particular piece of clothing as well?

7. I expect this will be as PatrikLundell suggests; buildings work as usual, low-level atoms like 'sing'/'gesture' etc. would just be part of the ritual which is performed automatically (adv. mode is another matter -- I expect a lot of that will also be automatically, but only when it becomes more annoying and less fun, a line I'm not sure will be obvious every time.)  There are some issues that have been raised in the past, particularly as it relates to clothing and also ammo/reagents; unsurprisingly, these are the things that DF already handles poorly (uniforms and bolts, respectively.)  We'll just have to generally improve this stuff as/before it becomes cumbersome.

I now want an adventure mode magic system that includes having to do the the right singing/gestures/ritual components to cast magic.  I foresee the system offering hints as to what various options will cast, with the option to have the proper course for a certain spell highlighted.  Then there is a bit of "Behold my phenomenal cosmic power!" combined with some "That sword looks scary, how about I stop trying to blast him with a fireball and just hit him instead."
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Only vaguely. Made of the same substance and put to the same use, but a bit like comparing a castle and a doublewide trailer.
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