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[A_Curious_Cat]

The mining yield is a balancing issue rather than a map issue, and has been addressed once, as mentioned by Eric Blank.

The map rewrite may well change the vein/cluster/... logic, in particular to generate a 3D connection (so several levels build up a body or ore, rather than the current logic where each Z level is generated independently of the other levels within the same layer. Such a change would probably result in in more tiles of ore for the kinds that are selected, but fewer kinds would likely be generated (basically larger but fewer bodies of ore, potentially resulting in about the same number of ore tiles in total)). This might potentially result in a balancing change.

This sounds similar to what 3dveins in DFHack does.  In particular, 3dveins uses Perlin noise to generate ore veins in 3d.

[BlueManedHawk]

<snip/>
The map rewrite may well change the vein/cluster/... logic, in particular to generate a 3D connection (so several levels build up a body or ore, rather than the current logic where each Z level is generated independently of the other levels within the same layer.
<snip/>

I don't really see what gameplay value 3D veins in particular would add to Dwarf Fortress besides confusing people who don't realize that the veins are 3D.

[lethosor]

I don't really see what gameplay value 3D veins in particular would add to Dwarf Fortress besides confusing people who don't realize that the veins are 3D.

Well, the purpose of the DFHack plugin was to make veins more "realistic" for those who want that. Real-life veins generally aren't flat.

[PatrikLundell]

DF tends towards realism in the simulation of real world phenomena, so I wouldn't be surprised of Toady would want to update the vein logic, and it's not impossible that Putnam might let the DFHack plugin logic form part of the input (as I don't think Toady spends time familiarizing himself with DFHack functionality).

I'm not sure why people would be confused by veins being 3D like they are in real life (e.g. slanted at an angle due to geologic processes).

[BlueManedHawk]

I don't really see what gameplay value 3D veins in particular would add to Dwarf Fortress besides confusing people who don't realize that the veins are 3D.

Well, the purpose of the DFHack plugin was to make veins more "realistic" for those who want that. Real-life veins generally aren't flat.

I don't see the point of realism for the sake of realism if it doesn't serve a gameplay function.

[A_Curious_Cat]

hopefully, I'm not to late with this question...



Lutefisk?

[Toady One]

How was thanksgiving for you Toady?

did you get any cool christmas presents?

Lutefisk?

There were several family parties and such - lutefisk even tasted good this year!  Everybody was shocked.

Annie made us cool hoodies in the style of those pig hoodies I wear, with the pigs in a grid, but with the dwarf face in place of pigs.

So my question is, was this ever a feature that civs would intially have similar asestetic genetic traits? Or was this all head cannon created by coinsidences? If so why was it changed?

Egan_BW: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8514784#msg8514784
Eric Blank: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8514925#msg8514925
TheFlame52: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8514936#msg8514936

I think we used to have more similarity within the starting group of civs, yeah, then we removed that and made the starting group more variable.  There should still be inherited traits.  But there's also the matter of the non-figure pops, which had a set of traits but I think we leaned away from colors for that until we could point at it more, if we ever decided to do that, since it's potentially frustrating, especially in adv mode, where we eventually added a full randomization button anyway.  It's complicated to figure out where that should land, similar to gender norms etc etc.

Will the upcoming procedural portraits be applied to other humanoid creatures besides the playable races (such as semi-megabeasts)?

We're going to get to what we can!  Ideally everybody would get portraits that reflect variations, wounds, and equipment, but that's a huge huge lift.  We'll be lucky to have portraits beyond the playable critters (main races + animal people) for the initial portrait debut.

Will you add graphics raws to the Classic version so implementing custom graphics packs that are compatible both with premium and Classic will be easier? I'm talking about the TXT files in vanilla*_graphics that are present in premium but not in classic, not the art itself.

voliol: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8516621#msg8516621
darkhog (op): http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8516666#msg8516666
Eric Blank: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8516762#msg8516762
Bumber: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8516886#msg8516886
Putnam: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8517262#msg8517262
darkhog (op): http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8517307#msg8517307
mikekchar: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8517438#msg8517438
Bumber: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8517855#msg8517855
etc.

Yeah, the txt files for the graphics stuff are all public domain, and as Putnam said, I don't include them in Classic because there'd be a ton of error messages and possibly actual errors as well.

Will the attire represented in the portraits enable distinction of units based on things like the social standing, culture, etc?

Will weapons / shield also be shown in the portrait?


Do you think that generated mythologies would be as extensive as current world generation history? (i.e, spanning hundreds to thousands of events and characters)

Do ettins have two personalities / souls?

There isn't any additional information attached to it, though social standing is represented for some critters by item quality, which will appear, and culture chooses which of the items are available.  But the more subtle variations don't yet have cultural links.  That won't happen until I attach words to clothing variations I expect.

We've talked a bit about weapons and shields, not sure if we'll get there.  It'd already be supportable for mods I think, since the full body layers can show those things and it's the same format.

If the distinction between the mythologies and the world histories is the existence of world-tile-level maps, then I doubt it, since we won't be able to spatially distinguish the same number of historical figures.  But there are gray areas as the maps come into focus.  It's still not entirely clear what year 1 is, or if there's even going to be a clear year 1 anymore (vs. a variety of calendars etc.)  It may be hard to tell where one ends and the other begins.  That could be ideal.

The current ettin like the hydra etc. just has one soul.  Almost certainly the ettin will end up with two when we get there, at least it seems like they are mostly depicted as arguing...  I have no idea about the hydra.  The conversation engine doesn't currently support a unit arguing with itself very well, especially in a way that distinguishes souls.  That would be part of that update.

Did the hippo man wrestler in the trailer organically accept to come with, or was there some manipulation behind the scenes? I tend to have trouble recruiting in my adventure games.

Nah, we only had a few animal people portraits at the time, so we had to stage a bit to get the art we had into play.  I tried to do it fair at first, but I had a ton of trouble finding a hippo person at all and eventually resorted to a horrifying transformation of a human warrior bar patron.  It'd be easier now that there are more portraits, and we're generally hoping to address the recruiting problem a bit before the release.

Will portraits work with non standard races? For example experiments, angels, gorlaks etc?
How will the portrait system work with modded creatures?
Will there be a way to add/modify the sprite layers used to build the faces?
If none are provided will there be some kind of stand in?

Will it be possible for modders to mod in their own custom procedurally generated portaits (for example, for a modded in race)?

Eric Blank: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8518601#msg8518601

We haven't drawn the non-standard races (we'd like to!)  But the portrait system works exactly like the current layer critters, like building a face instead of a whole creature, and we've added a few more layer graphics commands (that function everywhere) to make it work.  So it'll work for mods and any creature you care to draw (including non-layer critters - you can set up a portrait layer with one image without screwing everything else up I think, as the most simple way through.)

What are the plans to add baby graphics for dwarves and other layered creatures?  Is that on the backburner due to the level of effort?

We've already got them, I think, for dwarf children and possibly also babies - I'm the bottleneck for several things like this.

I noticed it mentions you can click on a tile to open a context menu for that tile, but does that option also exist on keyboard, like the way the 'l' and 'k' keys do in the currently released adv mode? Thats a pretty important functionality for keyboard-only support i figure

Yeah, I was gonna wait until I did mouse hover info, but we'll have a keyboard cursor for look that probably doubles as the context cursor.  Don't want to dig the hole deeper with Adv mode!

Are the armor variations seen in the most recent devpost based on item quality?

There are item quality sets, as well as random variations for a lot of clothing.  I'd prefer to also get those linked to fashion-type terms in text, but I haven't done that so they'll be random for now (variant + item quality.)

The walrus man is described as "A legless person with the head and back flippers of a walrus" and has the tag ANIMAL_PERSON_LEGLESS, but in the new sprites clearly has legs. It's the same with the elephant seal man (but not the leopard seal man or harp seal man...). The snail man is kind of the opposite, it should have legs but it's sprite shows it as legless.

Are the animal people going to be updated to match their sprites or is that just not an important detail to you?

Shinziril: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8519037#msg8519037
mross: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8519286#msg8519286
Bumber: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8519293#msg8519293

Yeah, there are some errors there from my poor communication with the artist (because there were so many to do at once.)  My fault.  And yeah, for whatever reason, we did decide early on that snail people should have legs and slug people shouldn't ha ha (and I failed to communicate that.)

Has working on Premium Adventure Mode allowed you to make any progress towards restoring the keyboard cursor in Fortress Mode?

lethosor: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8520000#msg8520000

Yeah, the Adv mode stuff isn't directly related (despite me working to have keyboard enabled there), but Putnam's already got some keyboard stuff working in Fort mode on some additional menus.  It's already in progress.

Any recent programming discoveries/new approaches since Putnam joined?

Has there been any movement towards automating game tests before releases?

Nothing recently as I recall (Putnam might have a more interesting answer, I've been in menu land, though Putnam has also been in menu land ha ha), and no movement in that direction though I was hoping to start at some point after one of the recent releases.

I remember in an interview earlier this year that you said you may sneak in small additions related to future content as you continue the updates at hand. Is there any chance next year after adventure mode comes out, we get another magical side activity like the divination dice?

We'll see!  We have plotted several pathways forward that will interact with the April deadline.  If we don't get to the coolest stuff, it'll still come right after.

When you get to the map rewrite, how far do you intend to go to change the current system of mining? Right now a large number of tiles cleared do not drop stone. This practically annoying when you mine an ore vein and see a large number of tiles not drop ore. This seems like a quick fix for something you intent to overhaul later.

I could see a couple dwarves mining and another dwarf loading a mine cart and taking the unwanted rubble out of the mine.  We already have mine carts!!! We already have dumping zones too. You might have to tweak how quantum stockpiling works, but it could be done. Quantum stockpiling also seems like a quick fix that will be overhauled later.

Eric Blank: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8521152#msg8521152
PatrikLundell: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8521200#msg8521200
A_Curious_Cat: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8521222#msg8521222
BlueManedHawk: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8521241#msg8521241
lethosor: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8521313#msg8521313
PatrikLundell: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8521512#msg8521512
BlueManedHawk: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8521553#msg8521553

Having stone drop everywhere would be an FPS problem as I understand it, and it also creates more hauling jobs (or more stone to hide, which is also unsatisfactory), which is bad for the game.  I know a lot of people want harder mining though.  Now that we have literal difficulty settings, perhaps this is more easily in the cards.  But it won't relate to the map rewrite at all.

[Egan_BW]

Thanks for the answers, and happy new year!

[A_Curious_Cat]

Are the armor variations seen in the most recent devpost based on item quality?

There are item quality sets, as well as random variations for a lot of clothing.  I'd prefer to also get those linked to fashion-type terms in text, but I haven't done that so they'll be random for now (variant + item quality.)

Does this mean that the portraits shown will change variations every time they're displayed (at least until they're linked to fashion-item terms)?

[Eric Blank]

Thanks for the answers!

[PlumpHelmetMan]

Thanks for the answers Toady, and a happy Granite 2024 to you!

[Bumber]

Annie made us cool hoodies in the style of those pig hoodies I wear, with the pigs in a grid, but with the dwarf face in place of pigs.

Pics?

[Telgin]

Does this mean that the portraits shown will change variations every time they're displayed (at least until they're linked to fashion-item terms)?

I'm guessing it uses the random part sprite system used to randomize unit faces already.  I'm pretty sure the random part "sticks" even between game sessions, probably using a simple RNG based on the unit ID or something.

[Immortal-D]

- Why is the number of custom labor groups limited and with numbers instead of icons?
- Are there plans to allow editing the default labor groups?
- Have you ever considered adding a world painter for precision embarks? (trying to spawn good & evil tiles adjacent is incredibly difficult)
- Do you know if Adventure Mode will be backwards compatible with existing worlds?

Yeah, the Adv mode stuff isn't directly related (despite me working to have keyboard enabled there), but Putnam's already got some keyboard stuff working in Fort mode on some additional menus.  It's already in progress.

- Does this mean we can fully remap the sub-menus? Like right now adding a hotkey for building a door requires a custom graphic corresponding to said keys.

[PatrikLundell]

DF had a world painter prior to the Premium release. It was horrible to use due to its mouse only interface so you had to paint a tile (usually without any visual feedback), move the mouse over to the selection part, and then move the mouse back to the next tile to paint (provided you can find which one it is, and provided the mouse didn't select a neighboring tile accidentally, as there was no cue as to what part of the cursor actually did the selection). Note that my scathing assessment is colored by my dislike for mouse only interfaces, but I don't think it's entirely unwarranted.

Apart from that, there was also the ability to define the parameter values for all the world tiles (Savagery, Elevation, etc.) in a file (used by the DF supplied tool) which could also be used by third party tools to define a world. However, the set of parameters did not include Evilness, probably partially because this is determined at a later stage in the world generation process (it was still possible to hack it if you interrupted the world generation at that stage and changed what DF generated to what you wanted before continuing the world generation process).

The reason for me using past tense is that I don't know what the situation is post Premium: the painter may or may not remain, and I would suspect the support for the parameter definition hasn't been removed as I don't see any immediate reason for why it would be affected, but I don't know.

But yes, parameter support for defining the base Evilness distribution in the world (before sources of Evil appear and spread their influences) would be very useful. Obviously, all this will go out the window once Evilness gets replaced by Spheres, but it will be a fair number of years before that becomes available.

It could be noted that it should be possible to make a DFHack script for the pre Premium version to interrupt world generation and override the generated Evilness with data from a file of a similar format to that used for the official parameters before resuming world generation. I suspect it would be possible for the post Premium release versions as well.