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Author Topic: Future of the Fortress  (Read 2850218 times)

clinodev

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #4275 on: November 03, 2021, 05:39:49 pm »

I am also interested to see what a new 'friendly' embark screen UI will be like, if theres any general refinement in the presentation of a embark, since most players outsource to DFhack for the info they actually want, like a geological survey hinging on almost cheating on the content of the soil and ore densities/types.

But i suppose in context, you can say dwarves run around with dousing rods to get the briefest of ideas what lies on embark, or least they know already without calling upon generalized geographical knowledge (abstract from scholarly pursuits, but maybe probably shouldn't be so omniscient about it without good reason)

True, DFhack's `prospect` is a bit overly generous with quantities and depths, but really the idea that dwarves would stop at some random location on the strength of "There's some kinds of metals here, somewhere!" as in standard vanilla embarking that's historically strange and unrealistic.

If you surveyed DF players about what metals and minerals they hoped to find in an embark, I suspect iron would head the list, with gold, silver, copper and coal all pretty high up. All of those are commonly found in surface outcrops and placer deposits in streams and rivers. Even in Roman times iron mines were placed more depending on convenient forests to cut for fuel than any difficulty finding the iron, which we know later miners would often locate by walking around after a rain and smelling* the distinctive metallic odor. Once embarked in DF, you'll routinely find one or more of these in stream beds if they're present, or boulders and outcrops, so they're only really hidden when choosing the site. I imagine dwarven caravans and other surface travelers would make notes as they go, and they'd probably be doing the same in the caverns for deep metals. I hope our hearty band of seven would at least check the river banks, and the rocks at their feet!

None of this takes into account any special dwarven relationship with stone or mining!

I'd like to see something more like PatrikLundell's `embark-assistant` make it into vanilla. It's a more fine-grained version of vanilla site search, able to check for individual minerals and features, without concerning itself overly with the quantity of resources like `prospect`.

* I've lived in a place with enough surface deposits of copper ore that half the valley smelled like wet pennies after a rain, and the stones would be blue or green depending on how wet they were, like great boulder-sized humidity gauges. It was only saved from commercial mining by the fact that it would cost so much to build proper roads through the mountains (and a small side helping of the local people having defended themselves by strength of arms in a not too distant civil war.)
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FantasticDorf

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #4276 on: November 03, 2021, 07:16:06 pm »

I am also interested to see what a new 'friendly' embark screen UI will be like, if theres any general refinement in the presentation of a embark, since most players outsource to DFhack for the info they actually want, like a geological survey hinging on almost cheating on the content of the soil and ore densities/types.

But i suppose in context, you can say dwarves run around with dousing rods to get the briefest of ideas what lies on embark, or least they know already without calling upon generalized geographical knowledge (abstract from scholarly pursuits, but maybe probably shouldn't be so omniscient about it without good reason)

True, DFhack's `prospect` is a bit overly generous with quantities and depths, but really the idea that dwarves would stop at some random location on the strength of "There's some kinds of metals here, somewhere!" as in standard vanilla embarking that's historically strange and unrealistic.

Id like to think that maybe other races pushed by their values and ethics would tend to lean more on different aspect of quantities, like elves concerning themselves more prominently counting trees, humans with plotted road-lines of how busy the traffic is, contrary to dwarf's mineral obsessions but then id be prancing off into suggestion-land more than likely.

And also interesting information about smelly mineral deposits, learn something new every day.

Quote from: Immortal-D
On the subject of tackling the more complicated interfaces for Steam, have you had a chance to look at bins & containers in general? i.e. Seeds within bags within barrels within stockpiles.

FantasticDorf: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8322876#msg8322876

I'm not sure what you are asking specifically here, in terms of problems to be addressed.  There are new conveniences - from the item sheets, you can zip easily down into containers and then back up to whatever/whoever is holding the object, which wasn't possible before, and barrels (and later bins) graphically show their general contents a bit now.

To clarify for Bins specifically; A Dwarf will claim an item inside the Bin for a task, and the entire contents of the Bin then become inaccessible for the duration.  If the Dwarf is interrupted or far away, an entire stack of cloth or bolts becomes unavailable until that retrieval has cleared.

Bins have been blighted since forever, that much i can sympathize.

Usually its more than satisfactory do-without and use QSP's without grouping things up into end-node bin-container for its final journey on the trade-wagon or to be destroyed under a bridge or lava. To tack a similar related issue to the one you've described, a single bin can forcefully occupy 20 metal bars, only dispense 1 max at a time to a metalworking shop preventing larger orders, and delay work between jobs from the act of refilling 1 from the greater pool of supply, so is never really even useful for the thing its recommended to other than a transport container/garbage can.

Still coming back to the question, if it pertains exactly to the function of the military, there are other containers like boxes that need addressing (that can be made to store food which rots when it shouldnt), which thus far with developer diaries is uncertain what the outcome for the bin/stockpile/boxes in arrow storage situation is going to be with the new structure of the military inner workings (similar to the metal example, adding and withdrawing is inefficient for loose arrows, except for the mass bulk of transporting/exporting)
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PatrikLundell

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #4277 on: November 04, 2021, 05:05:02 am »

I certainly wouldn't complain if the pre embark information showed a bit more, along the lines of what the Embark Assistant shows: sand, which DFHack has shown for a long time, the specific metals and economic minerals present, at least for the surface ones, corrections of the predictions (fixing the aquifer prediction bug, and taking erosion and depth cutoff into consideration for minerals). Expanded search criteria is probably too far off the main thrust to make it in, while incursion logic (accounting for bits of neighboring biomes entering tiles) and display of aquifer type mixes are borderline cases.
(Making the Embark Assistant redundant would be the ultimate goal).
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Fikilili

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #4278 on: November 04, 2021, 04:35:44 pm »

Quote
Fikilili asks "You've mentioned that you're thinking of implementing a dragon randomizer in the game, that would generate different types of dragons, and I wondered how it would work. [etc.]"

The short answer to your question is yes. The talk gives a little lengthier answer taking dragons as an example, but segues into one about Pokémon breeding and Ultima Online chicken fights after a while. I doubt the details have been worked out yet.

Wait what? Sorry, I'm very late to the party, but when did Tarn answered my question? It's been a while. I'd love to hear about this Pokémon breeding and Ultima Chicken fight thing... Sounds weird but also extremely interesting.
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"Military? What's that? Something to eat?"

Fikilili

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #4279 on: November 04, 2021, 04:44:51 pm »

Quote
Fikilili asks "You've mentioned that you're thinking of implementing a dragon randomizer in the game, that would generate different types of dragons, and I wondered how it would work. [etc.]"

The short answer to your question is yes. The talk gives a little lengthier answer taking dragons as an example, but segues into one about Pokémon breeding and Ultima Online chicken fights after a while. I doubt the details have been worked out yet.

Wait what? Sorry, I'm very late to the party, but when did Tarn answered my question? It's been a while. I'd love to hear about this Pokémon breeding and Ultima Chicken fight thing... Sounds weird but also extremely interesting.

Oh sorry, that's in the most recent DF Talk. Damn, I haven't posted in a long time.
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"Military? What's that? Something to eat?"

delphonso

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #4280 on: November 04, 2021, 06:23:55 pm »

After the rewriting is complete, will you leave some easter eggs in the game relating the "old" way to play the game ? Like the infamous unfriendly UMKH keys ? Would something happen if you use them ?

I was actually wondering about the intro screen. The opening animation is a reference to 2D DF - it is also iconic, and has a special place in our tiny, cold hearts.
Are we going to see a new opening animation?

PlumpHelmetMan

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #4281 on: November 04, 2021, 07:24:15 pm »

"DF Classic" will be included in the package as an optional feature, so it's not like the old-school intro screen will be rendered totally obsolete.
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It's actually pretty terrifying to think about having all of your fat melt off into grease because you started sweating too much.

delphonso

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #4282 on: November 04, 2021, 07:27:36 pm »

"DF Classic" will be included in the package as an optional feature, so it's not like the old-school intro screen will be rendered totally obsolete.

To clarify, I'm looking forward to a new one - even if it's the same intro but in the new art style.

PlumpHelmetMan

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #4283 on: November 04, 2021, 07:39:31 pm »

Oh, then I agree. That would indeed be cool.
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It's actually pretty terrifying to think about having all of your fat melt off into grease because you started sweating too much.

LordBaal

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #4284 on: November 04, 2021, 08:08:19 pm »

You know what it's extra cool? For the first time in years I will be able to actually buy the game, well in a few months thanks to the magic of the interwebs and the wonders of snail mail, but nevertheless, my first online purchase will be Dwarf Fortress, with Armok as my witness.
« Last Edit: November 05, 2021, 09:41:50 am by LordBaal »
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I'm curious as to how a tank would evolve. Would it climb out of the primordial ooze wiggling it's track-nubs, feeding on smaller jeeps before crawling onto the shore having evolved proper treds?
My ship exploded midflight, but all the shrapnel totally landed on Alpha Centauri before anyone else did.  Bow before me world leaders!

Mr Crabman

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #4285 on: November 05, 2021, 07:24:18 am »

To clarify, I'm looking forward to a new one - even if it's the same intro but in the new art style.

It would be awesome to see a remastered version of the current one; even though its artstyle isn't really the same as the Premium tileset, this is a good example of a brilliantly made remaster I think: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tg1xt26eAdE

It really seems to preserve a similar feeling as the current intro, largely because of the color palette I believe, even though presumably the original intro only used those colors for the ASCII aesthetics (the extreme darkness/black background); in my opinion even a remastered intro should definitely stick to the same color scheme.

Schmaven

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #4286 on: November 05, 2021, 03:43:03 pm »

In the z-status screen, other than prepared meals, what else is included in the "Other" category of the Food Stores?
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FantasticDorf

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #4287 on: November 05, 2021, 04:18:45 pm »

In the z-status screen, other than prepared meals, what else is included in the "Other" category of the Food Stores?

Bonemeal, as it usually is has its own category of powder_misc_creature, sort of nessecity given you could embark ontop of a bonegrinding monster lair and then need somewhere to store the "food", but not really useful unless you find somewhere to mod it in yourself, dwarves dont make a concious effort to attempt to eat it themselves.

A alternative would be like saying you could grind up animal-dye (a powdery substance) out of vermin (sea snails and beetles), which there are some mods to do exactly that to give more expansion to the category. IRL this would be like grinding pangolin scales or big-game horns into 'folk-medicine' as like what exists in certain Asian cultures.
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Schmaven

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #4288 on: November 05, 2021, 04:37:49 pm »

In the z-status screen, other than prepared meals, what else is included in the "Other" category of the Food Stores?

Bonemeal, as it usually is has its own category of powder_misc_creature, sort of nessecity given you could embark ontop of a bonegrinding monster lair and then need somewhere to store the "food", but not really useful unless you find somewhere to mod it in yourself, dwarves dont make a concious effort to attempt to eat it themselves.

A alternative would be like saying you could grind up animal-dye (a powdery substance) out of vermin (sea snails and beetles), which there are some mods to do exactly that to give more expansion to the category. IRL this would be like grinding pangolin scales or big-game horns into 'folk-medicine' as like what exists in certain Asian cultures.

So for the more tame embarks, the "Other" category would most likely only be referring to prepared meals then?
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Su

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #4289 on: November 07, 2021, 04:57:39 am »

[...] the most popular perhaps being the addition of 1-2 extra glyph sheets
👀

do you have a shortlist of glyphs to add? will they be based on unicode glyphs, or be entirely custom?
« Last Edit: November 22, 2021, 05:54:02 pm by Su »
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