Note: the 'd' key on my keyboard now works only half the time, in case I missed any below!
Regarding different dimensions, does any of your inspiration come from Michael Moorcock's books, particularly The Knight, Queen, & King of the Swords trilogy and the Chronicles of Corum? He uses the term "planes" rather than "dimensions", and many (if not most) of his other works use his concept of the multiverse of planes. His books have been favorites for me since the 80's. Yes, I deliberately didn't mention the Elric series because everyone must have read some of those.
clinodev:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8173504#msg8173504I haven't read any of those (not Elric either), but as clinodev says, ideas are laundered through the things we do have experience with, so whatever plausible inspiration can be traced is fair for sure.
Would it be possible to include "infinite" procedurally generated planes? DF currently generates maps of a fixed size. Because DF procedurally generates history, it has to be confined to a finite area. But could DF grant players access to planes where no history occurs, just infinite pseudo-random wilderneness? Or what about an infinite plane where civilisation is just confined to the "middle"?
Shonai_Dweller:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8173536#msg8173536Yeah, Shonai_Dweller's quote about covers it. Certainly possible, though as you indicate, there does need to be some kind of reasonable restriction on what sort of civilization/history such places have.
Eventually, every items/buildings in the game will be textured, and not ASCII-ed.
1. At this point, will we still be able to mod in new items/workshops by simply editing the raws ?
2. Will this require a sprite/texture for the modded items/buildings or could we just give it an ASCII tile like today ?
PatrikLundell:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8173924#msg8173924Putnam:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8176554#msg8176554The comments about describe it. You can still add stuff as usual, but of course if you have graphics on you also need to assign them a picture if you want them to have a picture, either using an existing one or one you draw. Currently, in the particular case where you are trying to make, say, a mod adding a workshop for the graphical version, it will just have a bunch of cyan
boxes for the graphics if you don't assign any - it doesn't try to display ASCII in place of the graphics (due to the tile sizes etc.) Remains to be seen whether we do anything additional with that, in terms of default graphics, such as a "default 3x3 workshop" that it uses as a placeholder.
Can personality be tied to political beliefs? In the next version, will there be political beliefs and non-theism/anti-theism that will also develop much like personality?
Will the position tokens, currently unused in dwarf civs and only found on human gen civs, be expanded upon in later versions? Some suggestions might be an advisor (ADVISE_LEADERS) for leaders higher than expedition leader, a raid leader (ATTACK_ENEMIES) noble, a dedicated master architect (CONSTRUCTION_PERMITS) noble, and a return of the arsenal dwarf (EQUIPMENT_MANIFESTS and UPGRADE_SQUAD_EQUIPMENT, this might be rolled into militia commander instead).
FantasticDorf:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8174089#msg8174089voliol:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8174091#msg8174091PatrikLundell:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8174272#msg8174272FantasticDorf:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8174356#msg8174356Putnam:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8176554#msg8176554As noted, there are already "values" and "ethics", such as they are in the game, which would count as political beliefs in some sense - there are also the various affiliations. There aren't specific philosophies, exactly, so certain types of politics aren't nailed down. Dunno how much we'll get to on the next likely pass, which is the restructuring of civ definitions for the embark scenario push (after magic.) Personality and politics are separated now - it gives some lip service to this in the personality paragraph (conflicted by the differences, etc.), and I suppose it would make sense to have some alignment of personality/values there more often than not (in terms of what people 'gravitate' to, or whatever), though I wouldn't want to make it too strict.
Yeah, those tokens were thrown in quickly to get some intermediate nobles, in order to stop some of the villainous stuff from being ridiculous, though we didn't get too far into access restrictions before we had to change gears. They'll presumably find more use when we get to the relevant portions of the game, though as you noted, some of them may already make sense in fort mode, and I'm not sure when we'll take our next look at extended the bureaucracy there (it'll certainly come up with the embark scenario stuff, just not sure if it'll happen at all before.)
Could future updates see specific dishes or cuisines associated with certain civs and/or sites?
Shonai_Dweller:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8174527#msg8174527therahedwig:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8174671#msg8174671Shonai_Dweller:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8174673#msg8174673Yeah, this was planned and delayed as the comments say.
1. Criminal behaviour such as embezzling suggests w.g civ/off-site dwarves end up earning a wage, same as devlog comments on wealthy patrons buying buildings. Are there any other implicit w.g things that dwarves spend their money on?
2. Is there any particular ordering of precedence to w.g payment for civ/non-fort-site positions or is it handled in some hardcoded way?
3. If poverty is a issue for a large majority of roles regarding the site-level army in supplimenting its equipment, do you think that it would impact responsibilities like [RESPONSIBILITY:UPGRADE_SQUAD_EQUIPMENT] (from the arsenal-dwarf, still a valid token to use but doesn't really do anything) capability to function without first procuring more money not spent elsewhere into funding better equipment?
I mainly say this because im in the middle of writing a suggestion thread as i speak; about the economics of how compared to mercenaries and rich folk operate in the mini-economy and some suggestions on how to budget armies a little bit more so that sieges can differ in quality between different civs at different levels of wealth. It'd be nice to have some informative quotes by the next time the FotF rolls around.
Its novel to think that humans while being the most merchantile grop with the highest respect for commerce, propensity to build merchant companies, (and some guilds to refine goods) are often fielding the worst armies quality wise in mass deployment of copper equipment, because the person in charge of the squads is a low paid and ranking member of their society with enormous gambling debts.
Mostly people aren't paid for regular w.g. jobs. The wealthy people that aren't explicit villains generally come out of the trading companies, where they can make and lose money from their "account" on each venture (these are reported as events.) We just did the bare minimum necessary here, or somewhere below it. Site armies aren't linked into an economy at all. There's just nothing to work with here currently. Theoretically speaking, the equipment stockpiles on site would be where the equipment comes from at first - that only requires "account" insofar as civs and sites trade on that number currently, and if they can't produce or trade for equipment, they wouldn't have it. Of course, whenever we get around to linking site/civ armies to site stockpiles, we'd need to work on the economy a bit, so the current state isn't really informative at all.
Will adventure mode get graphical paper-doll equipment screen?
Will there be daytime/nighttime change in DF? At least purely cosmetically it would be nice IMO.
Can we have animation for wind swaying the trees lightly? Pretty please 
Will there be animations for moving objects, destroying objects, dorf attacks, fire, waterfalls etc?
Shonai_Dweller:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8175484#msg8175484MrWiggles:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8176645#msg8176645Shonai_Dweller:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8176658#msg8176658FantasticDorf:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8176777#msg8176777Shonai_Dweller:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8176782#msg8176782Bumber:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8176864#msg8176864PatrikLundell:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8176872#msg8176872etc.
Not of any size, as that's a lot of extra work we can't easily put in for now. But the critters themselves in both modes will likely have some paper doll aspects.
The day-night issue is covered by the comments pretty much. There are a lot of issues and it's not planned.
The streams raised the animation bar considerably for us, but I'm not sure any thing else will be coming to meet them any time soon. Still lots of basic stuff left to do!
Mostly not, especially at first, I expect. They'd add a lot to the game of course, but we're operating under considerable limitations for the first release, and just getting all of the basics done will be good.
Do you have any interest in adding evolutionary capabilities to the game? I think having physical features naturally adapt to each environment would add a lot of interesting variety to the game. Maybe even aspects of personality and mind can be tied to genetics in the game? Regarding the time scales, I have made a few simulations of my own and evolution can happen very fast in some circumstances. Wars and environment changes can spur rapid change in the gene distribution. This may be out of scope for what you have in mind for DF, but I think it could lead to interesting cases, such as magically inclined or magically resistant populations.
FantasticDorf:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8175604#msg8175604Not a focus on the time scales we're working with for sure, and it would seem kind of tacked on in most circumstances we can pull off. If we do make the model more complicated/less buggy/whatever the current issue is with stats as in the recent thread/etc., we could arrive at dog breeds and things, which is where we were aimed partially initially, as I vaguely recall. But other lasting change and adaptation is likely to come more of necro experiments etc. etc., as currently. I don't think we could reasonably do a model that sufficiently like, slowly changes moth colors if magic pollution makes everything purple, or whatever, that wouldn't be better done just as a more explicit non-model effect (processor etc.-wise). But it's hard to say in the end where any population dynamics or ecology will lead us - even simple tweaks to the existing breed structures involving drift/mutation on a pop scale would get us evolution by definition (if the dynamics give us selection based on whatever drifts, which is harder), it just wouldn't be any good. Definitely the sort of thing that would happen on a lark rather than an explicit feature arc.
With features like beard color being more visible by the promotional content for the steam release, do you think that there would ever be such popularity for a feature or increased requests for ways to aesthetically alter dwarf's beards or other body aspects through in-game means (bleaching beards, barbering & dying, tattoos, bodypaint, yikes deliberately cutting off hair as punishment etc.)
Something emergent like elves suddenly isolated and under shaping of dark forces becoming orcs (which is a device of Tolkien) or even the radical transformation of necromancer-experiments is a example of forced evolution. The people affected by it just live with it, when the site government falls apart for whatever reason they're thrown out into the world free to follow their wishes, they aren't night creatures but its easy to draw a association, a bit like when you judge a goblin in a tavern is automatically a spy.
I don't have an opinion of what would be popular here, but certainly a lot of that was kicking around the dev notes etc. (tattoos/paint/shaving have come up anyway), and the hair would very likely be reflected with whatever we have on the first Steam release (not that we are doing shaving soon.) Overall, it wouldn't surprise me if more people want things they can see. I don't know that it connects immediately to the more extreme stuff, though of course we'll have to reflect e.g. experiments in the initial release already.
I have a question regarding the code. In the past the idea was to have the code delivered to the NY Museum of Arts in the case of Toady passing. First, I dont know if that actuallt meant the code would be made public or only parts of it as some display of sorts. Second, is that still the plan? Or now the code wont be released ever to anyone?
Also, Toady, would you aprove of us trying to use necromancy in that case to bring you back? I mean, what could go wrong? .
Bumber:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8175652#msg8175652Yeah, nothing has changed. I mean, except the chance of the passing, now that we are living in additional hells.
Will 24-bit colors for text display mentioned in the 08/08/2020 dev post also be in the classic game?
clinodev:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8176775#msg8176775Technically, yeah, though it doesn't mean much yet. The game still uses the same colors in all of the text everywhere -- it's not like I updated those (~8000) calls to have a new color scheme everywhere. But we now have the freedom to do more, and more can happen, over in classic as well.
Is it true that long term memories can't be replaced by short term memories of equal strength? This Reddit thread seems to think it's the cause of major stress issues.
FantasticDorf:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8176941#msg8176941That doesn't appear to be how it works (not that there aren't bugs or issues, etc., so the following might not be how it actually works either.) The eight "long term" memory slots are a fairly short-term holding pen in the end, depending on how much happens to the dwarf - it appears they can get overwritten even by weaker short term memories that promote (which can happen after lasting a year in short term.) However, while they are in these eight slots, any long term memory that resurfaces (in the emotions paragraph) has a 1/3 chance at that time of being converted to a core memory, which is when the personalities change. There's no limit on how many core memories can be stored (within reason) and they don't get overwritten. The only time a long term memory can block itself from being overwritten by a short-term memory is if they are exactly the same type of circumstance, then the strong one wins. Core memories don't resurface as often, and aren't as intense.
For short term memories against themselves, the system is to take an empty slot first, otherwise if you find one with the same grouping you replace it if you are stronger (or equal strength 1/3rd of the time), otherwise if nothing matches, you simply overwrite the weakest (even if you are weaker than it!) So for them it's kind of the opposite, really - a dwarf with a lot of varied circumstances will overwrite strong memories with weaker ones before they get a chance to promote to long term. If anything is causing issues like rain-memory-prevalence it'd be something like this, because it is based more on frequency than strength.
Considering that when you subjugate goblins after much back and forth raiding & bashing up they don't really keep their promises at all to send you their agreed continous tribute, will you expect a further implementation of sending actors to these sites to do intrigue can help reinforce them doing 'what you want them to do' implicitly the game guessing for you on circumstance, or will there be details?
If it's just something broken, that's a separate matter - there's nothing fancy going on with tribute. Improved diplomacy is a whole topic - as we've mentioned a few times now, the previous work on villains and 'c' squads has pointed toward more and more diplomacy improvements.
Regarding the recent UI update posted for Steam; Can you yet say how much of an overhaul the Labors menu will receive? Will there be functional changes beyond graphics & mouse scrolling? i.e. the abilities of Dwarf Therapist utility to mass-apply labors and create custom 'professions' (a saved grouping of labors).
Edit: Do you have any new info regarding the Game Ending Stress thread?
Shonai_Dweller:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8178074#msg8178074We haven't started work on any of this yet (neither the labors nor the stress), so I don't have a lot to add. As Shonai_Dweller writes, we are leaning toward an automated default approach, so that the jobs get done and people don't have to micromanage or be confused about unfinished jobs, but that we may still have something under the hood for people to play with that want more control -- no idea what that looks like. I don't like the spreadsheet approach at all, but I'm not sure there's a better way to handle the micro-side of it, since that's exactly what is stored and what is going on. In some ideal universe, micromanaging simply wouldn't be desired by anybody, because whatever other system is working that well, but attaining that seems difficult.
Have taken a lot of notes on both the stress and noobs threads, but don't know what we'll get to yet (aside from certain UI stuff which addresses new player issues already.) Obviously some of it will be pretty high priority when we get to that stage, but e.g. changes to dwarf behavior come after graphics and UI.
The top tab on the embark screen says "Dwarves". Is that a procedurally generated word that changes automatically in modded games? Or if not, can it be changed by modders?
PatrikLundell:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8178293#msg8178293Yeah, it changes automatically like other instances of dwarves. If the name of the modded creature is longer than the tab, it says "Citizens" instead.
Hello,
I'm not a modder myself but I'm curious about modding possibilities. Anyone knows if the Toady is planning to make more of the hardcoded data accessible to modders for the steam version?
Basically giving full control to modders
LordBaal:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8179450#msg8179450PatrikLundell:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8179464#msg8179464FantasticDorf:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8179467#msg8179467Comments address this one pretty much. We're not doing a particular push here (the basic capabilities of the release are more important), and enterprising modders can do (and have done) pretty much anything already -- but it is good to make that easier, and more stuff will make it out to txt files etc. over time.
Im wondering, we will be able ti turn things like stairs and ramps directions.
I mean the graphics. Currently the ramps and stairs are represented by a single title each, so i.e. in graphic packages you have to decide if up stairs and down stairs go to the left or the rigth. The ramps currently are represented in the vertical direcction.
Its only a cosmetic and useless issue.
PatrikLundell:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8179749#msg8179749LordBaal (op):
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8179855#msg8179855voliol:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8179862#msg8179862Haven't done anything in particular with that. Seems reasonable enough now that we have the capability to show different stuff - I imagine there are various avenues here, with all sorts of tiles.
The stuff you were talking about in the second-to-last DF talk about imaginary magic systems in mundane worlds got me thinking: will humans in such settings sometimes still believe that the vanilla DF fantasy races like dwarves, elves, goblins, and the like exist in their particular world? It's not like various human cultures haven't believed in these creatures in the past, so it would make sense.
Eric Blank:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8180421#msg8180421Shonai_Dweller:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8180430#msg8180430Yeah, the comments are correct - down to the FANTASY_SCALE idea, which exists as a slider rating in the current myth generator. Likely that'll become more complicated, as usual, but that's the basic idea. And yeah, there could still be mythical elves and things that people believe in. I suppose there might also naturally lead to situations where the humans believe in mythical beings but the settings don't remain low and then the beings can come into existence, variously. (Obviously if the player says "I want low settings!" they'll remain low, but there could be variability at higher settings as well.)
What's the current approach regarding the UI for the Classic/character tile set Premium version of DF?
The reason for the question is the realization that things are reworked significantly, so the current UI can't be retained as is, and it seems to be a duplication of effort to make two different versions of the UI, in particular if a character set oriented version would try to emulate widgets using characters (or something looking like characters).
Edit: To clarify, I'm thinking of things like sliders, that do not naturally translate into tiles, rather than cases where the character tile set can easily be used instead of image/icon tiles.
Shonai_Dweller:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8181347#msg8181347PatrikLundell (op):
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8181442#msg8181442clinodev:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8181721#msg8181721I still haven't had to jump into this yet - until the main interface and a few other windows solidify, I don't want to code up ASCII equivalents that might just get dropped. But as the new graphical UI continues to come together, yeah, we'll have a few specific obstacles in terms of pixel graphics (sliders/scrollers/etc.) If their display snaps to the grid, that's probably mostly okay, though we'll have to try some examples to see if it really works. But yeah, as clinodev mentioned, there are some compelling reasons to just go ahead and try matching ASCII widgets and see how it goes.
To accommodate this and continued parallel Classic-Premium development, the entire non-play-area graphical UI interface is compatible with the old-style font-grid layer, so it's not actually as impossible a job as it might sound, mostly -- grid alignment is baked into everything already, with a few pixel offsets when necessary (for stuff like item and creature tiles in lists, which won't impact ASCII conversion.) But the core issue of whether ASCII lines/etc. look passable enough as widgets to be usable is open until we attempt a screen. If we're lucky, it'll come out looking like one of the current-gen ASCII roguelikes, with nice little clickable bits and menu division and such. If not, we'll have to formulate and implement a plan B.
The grid adherence does mean if some other texture size than 32x32 is used and/or some other font than 8x12, certain bits of the interface have to adjust to get the hybrid lists to work, and edges and stuff will need to be adapted by modder/etc., but it isn't a huge amount of necessary artwork so far. A lot of the work is in the code - some parts are still to-do there, getting arbitrary textures and font sizes to work together, but nothing looks too hairy.
Will there be an expansion on medical simulation in Fortress Mode? Will there also be disease simulation, dentistry, and hygiene (haircare and skincare) in the game at some point?
FantasticDorf:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8181444#msg8181444Yeah, some of this is on to-do, and a lot is also implied by the current medical scholarship system as well (which doesn't interact with the hospital stuff at all, sadly.) Hopefully we can get to some as we go. The (relatively) upcoming adv mode medical stuff probably won't introducing a lot of new systems, as opposed to just bringing modes more into line.
I heard there was some criticism of the scroll bars in the embark loadout screen. Have you considered having multiple pages to tab through rather than scroll bars? Already, there are category tabs at the top, so my concern with pages replacing scroll bars would be just too many tabs.
therahedwig:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8181527#msg8181527Yeah, there are already a ton of category item tabs on the embark screen (and there are so many they have a scroll bar!) - at least those tabs make sense because they have some context attached to them. For random paging, scroll bars seem much, much more the industry standard than having page tabs, and page tabs are also much more limited in use I think since you just can't fit as many as you can fit with a scroll bar. Although I may be misunderstanding what is meant by tabbing pages -- if the page tabs don't have any graphical buttons, then going through 20+ pages with the tab key is a nightmare analogous to a lot of the existing DF UI problems people complain about, just an invisible scroll bar without a scroller to grab or the ability to partial-page. Hmm, I'm not sure what the criticism was in particular, so I don't want to be too negative. But I don't have that information.
Do you think the 'text' terminal rendering mode for DF will survive all these upgrades? I know we're keeping an old-style ascii graphics pack, but all the changes made to different grid sizes sound like terminal-text wouldn't be compatible anymore.
We still have the main grid, and the text still lives there. Most of the interface does too, in some sense or another (a lot of elements are font-compatible in size, since they have to play nice with the text.) The graphical view and maps live in separately gridded/etc. windows, which don't exist in the current Classic version. So at the end of the process, we're still hoping to just have the one classic grid sitting there if graphics are turned completely off. Lots of hurdles to get by yet, as usual.
1. What exactly is required for a bandit/mercenary fort to spawn in the world. I am currently working on a project in which the only civ type is the fortress site-type and the only biomes are tundra and mountains. The civ has BUILDS_OUTDOOR_FORTIFICATIONS, but the forts themselves do not appear. Are there other requirements I don't know about? [answered I guess]
2. When the eventual military update rolls around, will there be more diversity in unit types? By which I mean more combinations of armor (ranged units in heavy plate armor for example) or the use of sidearms/multiple weapons, like a pikeman or bowman who carries a shortsword and uses it when the enemy comes close, or a berserker-type of fighter who uses two one-handed weapons.
3. Is there any way to prevent forgotten beasts from spawning without setting cavern layers to 0?
FantasticDorf:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8182254#msg81822541. Military groups like merc companies build one when they have 50 members and a sufficient account. Bandits also need 50 people, but they don't use accounts. They can't build them near to other sites, on water, or in sand deserts, but mountain edges and tundra should be fine.
2. It'll need to understand a bit more about equipment divisions, yeah, though some of that specifically depends more on individual rewrites we might not get to (people switching weapons, etc.)
3. It's linked to the layers right now, yeah.
The Dwarf Fortress Wiki article on 'Time' indicates that time advances 72 times faster per tick in Fortress Mode relative to Adventurer Mode, which is something I've seen repeated as a fact in a plethora of forum posts over the years. However, when attempting to corroborate this using DFHack, I observed that the presumed fortress-mode-tick counter increases by 1 for every 144 increase in the presumed adventurer-mode-tick counter, and the counter from which the calendar date appears to be derived in both modes increments by 1 when these increase by 10 and 1440 respectively. To me, this implies that the time difference between the two modes is in fact double the value stated above. Is this actually the case, or am I barking up the wrong tree?
PatrikLundell:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8182008#msg8182008The current number is 144, yeah, and half-seconds, as I recollect the conversions. It used to be 72, but that changed some years back, when travel times didn't have enough granularity for the sprinting etc., perhaps (I don't recall the year or situation exactly - we were also having issues with travel mode travel time granularity.) Certainly understandable that 72 is still assumed, since there wasn't more than a simple statement about this at the time (if that, whenever it was), and I likely got it wrong afterward a few times.
Since the positions are hardcoded at present, for the upcoming (past steam release in mind) Military Arc, would you be releasing any of the structures related to the military positions (like elf rangers, human warriors, generic captains etc) to the modding community or would you be expecting to flush them out and put in a new system/set of positions in typical DF style?
It's kind of frustrating that these old positions with [ATTACK_ENEMIES] and [PATROL_TERRITORY] do not have any perjunctive use at all but carry everything related to sieges in their mysterious ways, but i hope im not overstepping too much asking about it; after the modding community got a significant boost in 47. with forgotten beasts and our special friends the clowns's special tokens being brought to the forefront was greatly appreciated.
It depends on which bits you mean. A lot of the military isn't hardcoded (though the structures there such as squads/militia captains/etc. work more in fort mode), but the generic procedural bits are, and like the forgotten beasts, it's not simple to get the procedural bits out. There's a lot that needs to be integrated and thought about, and I'm not sure how it'll end up. The game has never understood civ/site armies very well at all - it just gathers people up and smacks them together, whereas the forts and even the bandits have more structure to them, whereas the mercenaries etc. have structure as well but it's very procedural. On the other hand, a lot of the merc stuff like honors (titles/ranks/etc.) are rawable.
This has probably already been asked, but will we be able to transfer saves from the current version to Steam and vice versa?
clinodev:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8183839#msg8183839PatrikLundell:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8183968#msg8183968There'd definitely need to be some work done once we change the save structure to decouple graphical tile sets from saves (as the old system of bundling them is completely unfeasible now), but they might still work after that. They still work currently.
1. Will the graphical equipment and goods selection screen also be used when selecting our starting gear in adventure mode in addition to being used in fortress mode?
2. Will the fast travel screen in adventure mode also have a graphical mini map version?
1. Haven't gotten there yet, but that's where it seems to be headed!
2. I haven't thought about a pixel minimap there specifically. In some sense, it might not be incredibly useful, if a screen is ~1900 px wide, then you'd be more than a hundred tiles wide already (map tiles are 16x16), and our currently pixel minimap in fort mode is just 192x192 (obviously it would help a bit more vertically.) But I'm open to different looks there.
For the steam/itch release, will there be support for playing different music depending on the situation? Like changing song during a siege, breaching HFS, traveling, exploring, combat in adventure mode?
We have a song recorded already for one such thing, so there'll be something like that, though I don't know if we'll go beyond whatever triggers we actually implement as we go.
Will you post a cute picture of Scamps?
ScampsHow does the differences in trailing gut behaviour between tileset and ASCII modes affect save compatibility?
IIRC, you can currently smash trailing guts with a drawbridge. Would they disappear in tileset mode if you smashed them in ASCII mode?
There is no difference in the saves from the guts. It just doesn't display the second tile. Currently, there isn't a lot you can do mechanically with the second tile (we had various ideas that didn't go in), so it isn't a big deal. Couldn't find anything in the drawbridge smashing function that referred to guts either.
How many more things need to be done before dwarf fortress can be released on steam?
PatrikLundell:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8184644#msg8184644Shonai_Dweller:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8184747#msg8184747Addressing the remarks there, there is a deadline (it isn't this year, and I don't want to get into it specifically since it's not the same as a release date. We do not have a release date.) 2020 has been complicated, obviously, and could get arbitrarily more complicated - I'm sure there's a certain amount of flexibility possible. However, that isn't the way to operate - going to work, going to get things done. PatrikLundell is correct that there's a whole giant list of things we need to do and a whole list of things that we want to do, and there's no way we're getting to everything. Fortunately, the Steam release is in some senses just another DF release (one which we'd like to be as good as possible, of course), and we can keep working afterward, as usual.
But yeah, there's a ton left to do. I don't want to commit to implementations or even overmuch to what's in and out, so I'm not going to provide a detailed to-do list. As PatrikLundell says, we may have to cut things off our desired list for the first release, but as we proceed that'll hopefully just be stuff we haven't even mentioned, much less promised.
Will there be a new font for Steam version of the game? I find the existing one not blending well with the UI.
Dunno yet. I agree the MS-DOS look of it doesn't hold up so well in the absence of surrounding ASCII glyphs, but we're currently trying not to create additional problems for ourselves, which would happen if we tried to do anything fancy with it.
Hey Toady I've seen some mentions of alternative "Planes/Universes" in the questions and I had a couple questions about them too, along with Gods, Divinity, and Magic.
1.Could it be possible to "Destroy" an entire Plane?
2.Will Gods have a chance being able to physically enter and interact/alter a plane, as a Living God/Avatar. Or Potentially Create a Entirely New Plane?
3. Is there a Chance of a Plane where Gods Reside? such as Mt. Olympus in Greek Mythology. Where Gods will Exist as Physical Beings and interact with each other? Potentially effecting the Mortal Plane?
4.If So Will Gods have a chance being able to physically enter and interact/alter a plane, as a Living God/Avatar. Or Potentially Create a Entirely New Plane?
5.will it be possible for a Mortal Creature to Ascend to Divinity?
voliol:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8184867#msg8184867MrWiggles:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8184904#msg8184904Yeah, as the comments noted, we don't have a feature set nailed down. Some things are more likely than others for a first pass - having places where deities reside is almost assured, whereas the destruction of an entire plane is more likely the earlier in time you go. We'd like to have change on that scale, of course, but whether or not the first pass handles it is an open question. State changes (mortal -> divine, etc.) are part of the creature writeups in the myth prototype already, in some sense, mostly through meditating or dying, that sort of thing, and I'm sure that'll expand out as it goes. But yeah, certainly these are the kinds of things we're aiming at.
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Topic: Future of the Fortress (Read 3124197 times)