Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[PatrikLundell]

@Putnam's answer is actually a bit understated, as functionality has been reshuffled so what used to be one key action can now be two or more mouse key actions, and some functionality that formerly resided in multiple keys now can be in a single mouse key action (but most often split into several, but along different lines).
Thus, it wouldn't just be the UI that would have to be duplicated, but the functionality underneath would have to be reverted as well for the old key binding scheme to work. That already exists, in the form of the pre premium versions, at the cost of no change to anything else either. That is, however, the best that can be offered with the old keybinding scheme.

Thus, there's no going back to the muscle memory keybindings. If keyboard support is restored (which is intended, eventually), and rebinding of keys is supported (which I hope, as that's generally a good thing, even though I'd probably rarely use it myself), the best you could do is a mashup between some things that use the old UI bindings and some that are using new ones (or ones made up by the re-binder). I think such an attempt would result in something rather bad, though, as the advantage of re-binding everything from scratch means bindings can be more logical than the result of decades of adding new keybindings to free keys as new functionality was introduced, so re-learning a new set with better bindings should be better in the long term than clinging to an increasingly weird mix of old and new.

Here's hoping there won't be too many more years before full keyboard support is restored.

[evil_pigeon]

i don't know about anyone else but i can't get it to update from beta 25 to 26, even switching back to non-beta and back doesn't do anything

edit: scratch that, apparently verifying files fixed it lol

[TheFlame52]

I think I speak for a lot of people when I say that keyboard controls are a lot easier on the hands and wrists than mouse controls.

[A_Curious_Cat]

I think I speak for a lot of people when I say that keyboard controls are a lot easier on the hands and wrists than mouse controls.

What about trackballs (both finger-operated and thumb-operated), trackpoints, and touchscreens? How do each of them compare to using a mouse (and to each other)?  How do they compare to using the keyboard?


Anyways, I would suggest providing support for both keyboard and pointing devices.  Anything you can do with a pointing device, you should also be able to do with just the keyboard.

[Urist Mchateselves]

Are you planning to expand upon the possible effects of magical items before the release of adventure mode?

[Randomizer]

I am curious, what country did Tarn Adams move to when he got married?

[jecowa]

I’m curious if Toady One visited ThreeToe for Thanksgiving and also what dishes were served at his Thanksgiving meal.

[Randomizer]

I’m curious if Toady One visited ThreeToe for Thanksgiving and also what dishes were served at his Thanksgiving meal.

I don't think my question was inappropriate.

[Toady One]

Are there plans to return the "L" button function to adventure mode keyboard? Much as I'm excited about all the new features that are coming, having to hover the cursor over everything I want to look at is the main thing keeping me away from the mode at the moment.

Are there any plans to add legacy controls to the game for those who were used to 47.05 and previous controls? I noticed a lot of the base structures aside from alerts were still there and was hoping that I could interact with all the new content in the old way!

DPh Kraken: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8562254#msg8562254
Putnam: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8562280#msg8562280
PatrikLundell: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8562305#msg8562305

Yeah, we can't support two entire parallel vanilla interfaces, but we're still planning for keyboard support, without the need of a mouse.  It's also possible that once our lua conversion can handle the full vanilla interface, people that want to come together and create a different interface (47.05 or otherwise) will have enough API hooks etc. to do so.  The lua conversion is first going to handle procedural objects, but we'd like to expand it to interface objects as well, which should open up a lot of avenues.

I would assume that's just not feasible at all unless you limit it to one individual or group per (sub?)region/per species in a region, but if the objective is simply to provide wildlife encounters for the adventurer to hunt/track/avoid more explicitly than randomly popping up when you walk around on the local map, then is using the army code to create wandering 'armies' of wild animals spawning/despawning around the player possible instead? Can armies be created and destroyed arbitrarily enough for that to work? Not necessarily a complex mechanic gameplay wise, but it could be made more complex by conditions like season/time of day being taken into account. And armies also create trails of tracks that can be followed even in local play. If you can hide certain armies from the player until they are close enough/their tracks are discovered then that can contribute as an additional hunting mechanic. But you wouldn't get to seek out animal dens this way; they wouldnt have any.

FantasticDorf: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8559931#msg8559931

I'd rather not use the army code because it's too heavy weight for a simple moving creature.  It also wouldn't make very good sense, since you'd find several other creatures of the same type if you just did local travel through the typical generation mechanisms, so it wouldn't make any sense.  It would be nice to have some lighter weight mid-level structure(s) on the region that handled it all more properly.  This might also give us cool stuff like large migrations.

I know this is probably a super boring question, but how does the vision system work for NPCs?Has it changed at all with the introduction of Adventure mode, or will it change in future? Is it the same thing as the vision cone in the creature raws? I would assume it’s the same between Fortress and Adventure mode, but if not then what’s the difference?

Best I know is from the DFHack devs, that being its apparently it’s a massive array,and through the creature raws it looks like it may be accessible; but nobody actually knows how to interpret any of the data or how the mechanics work. Is it similar to CDDA at all? And in adventure mode is there a seperate interaction between an NPC LOS with another NPC, and an NPC LOS with the PC?

aSpatula66: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8560034#msg8560034

I'm not sure what the massive array is.  They just cast obstruction-sensitive sight lines within their range which are cleared with their vision angles (in adventure mode, as a Spatula66 says, in fort mode there aren't angles).  The NPC-NPC and NPC-PC LOS stuff is the same as I recall, though it's possible I cut corners in the interest of speed at some point over the years.  I try not to preference the player (aside from the loaded area) whenever I can, so that the sim stays simple.

With the Myth and Magic update adding procedurally generated magic, I’m very interested to see how and if curses are going to get expanded upo. Are there any plans at this point to add Deity specific curses? I think it would be super fun if a deity would bestow a curse based on its spheres. Or even based on how the dwarf/human/manbearthing miffed the god in the first place, kinda like with IRL mythological curses like Medusa or Echo.

Also, are there any plans to add curses that aren’t from gods? Like for instance, a curse on a tomb in world gen, or a curse from a necromancer onto a bloodline?

Lastly, are there any plans to add curses to the magic available to dwarves in fortress mode? Say, putting a curse through some ritual onto the tomb of the king/queen, or a macabre/fell mood dwarf with the right religious know how putting a curse on their artifact?

I think the curse system could add a lot of dimensions to each world through the gods and demons of the world and could even bring out some villain stories LOTR style, so I really would love to hear your thoughts and plans for that in the future.

aSpatula66: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8560033#msg8560033

Yeah, this all sits right within the realm of things we are interested in (and as aSpatula66 mentioned, we already have the one non-deity curse.)  It's all on the very very large table, so I'm not sure what we'll get to first, though we are rapidly approaching the time of actual decisions here ha ha.  Which is cool.

The wiki mentions "traitor" dwarves. What are these exactly? Are they an unfinished feature or are they so obscure and secretive that no one has encountered them before?

DPh Kraken: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8560778#msg8560778

I'm assuming the wiki editor(s) here was referring to the artifact heist dwarves, as DPh Kraken mentioned.  It's not just accidentally revealing artifact presences (which isn't treachery), but dwarves being flipped in the tavern by visitors, generally through threats.  They should be revealed by interrogation and in legends mode.  It is an underdeveloped system, but people have seen it.  At one point I remember complaints about it happening too often.

1. You've repeatedly brought up "mysterious mythological sites" as part of the Adventure tutorial arc. Is there any idea of how these dungeons may be populated? I had heard that there would be procedural nasties, but what of user-defined creatures?
Beta 26: Animal tokens on [MYTHICAL] entities?

2. Site code has a reputation for being unpredictably load-bearing. I wonder, do mythic dungeons sidestep many issues because they aren't entity-linked?

3. How's the food and drink in your new home?

ryno: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8561331#msg8561331
voliol: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8561344#msg8561344

1. These were fast additions to provide reliable intact tutorial dungeons.  We'll be expanding out the concept, at which point, yeah, you should be able to get them populated.  Right now it just looks for a goblin-type creature so that they don't starve to death in w.g. (ruining the quest tutorial.)

2. They are entity-linked.  They get their equipment from one of the standard civs randomly, and use their entity to keep their pops from killing each other, similar to bandits.  I could have used the vault-type entities, but that had some unwelcome baggage as well.  It'll probably end up being a third+ option as the mythical site types evolve.

3. I like it just fine.  Went up to Edinburgh and had some whiskey.  Had a Sunday Roast.  Had a nice souffles.  Went to a chippy.  Had a seaside doughnut.  And so forth.  The Mexican food situation is not ideal however, which was expected.

This may seem like a redundant question, but what else are you planning to add in the upcoming adventure mode update? And what are you planning to work on after that? I'm having a hard time keeping up with everything. Thanks!

jecowa: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8561384#msg8561384

We're trying to be finished with the adv mode beta, so I'm just working on tutorial stuff from now to launch I think.

jecowa mentioned some of the big bits.  There are also the army/siege improvements, the adv mode site building, the lua beta, and etc.  No fixed order set yet, and we likely won't fix an order for any significant future period.  We'll just try to keep the ball rolling without disappearing for long.

can you elaborate on what the specific difference is between the Lua beta versus the Myth & Magic update?

voliol: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8561421#msg8561421

I think voliol's reply covers it.  lua starts with the existing procedural raw-style objects, and expands out from there as a tool to implement much of myth/magic.  Myth/magic starts hard-coded (as we see with the mythical dungeons etc.) but will become more of a lua project as lua gets main-lined, hopefully getting us to a unified state before too long.  We're just starting lua in beta because it's a huge change that needs to be put through its paces, but it won't be on a beta branch forever.  Then it'll just be myth/magic (and more), with lua as a powerful tool for us and for modders.

Will player-made campsites (adventure mode) be finished prior to the release of adventure mode, or is that another update afterwards?

These are coming after the release.  We're not sure when.  Last we said, it was going to be with the first major update to adventure mode, but we're trying not to do major updates anymore, in the time sense.  I'm not sure if we'll just try to do the existing interface as quickly as possible or blend it into some other feature, but it's a near-term thing (after the beta ends.)

Could Dwarf Fortress in the future allow for a 3D world map? Think Underdark - a giant system of caves and tunnels, possibly without any surface.

voliol: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8561794#msg8561794
Eric Blank: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8561814#msg8561814
Putnam: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8561818#msg8561818

Yeah, a large part of the former "Big Wait" was the "Map Rewrite", which in part was made to support just this kind of thing.  We've figured out enough ways to implement the map changes piecemeal that we can now just start to slowly make the world more interesting and varied, and to allow the global 'map' of whichever worlds to be something aside from a 2D rectangle.  There are still some huge issues (one of the major ones being how objects that fall into nothingness are managed when the whole 3D column isn't loaded, another being army navigation, another being interface display and interaction), but we're just going to go ahead and see what happens.

How much has Putnam's help sped up the work towards Myth and Magic? Is there still going to be a Long Wait?

Inarius: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8562020#msg8562020
Putnam: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8562026#msg8562026
jecowa: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8562033#msg8562033
voliol: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8562052#msg8562052
Egan_BW: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8562058#msg8562058

Yeah, we're really trying never to do long waits again.  Putnam's lua work should be incredibly useful for the myth and magic stuff.  An awful lot of it will take place in new scripts I think.

1. Currently the mysterious dungeons that are on the beta branch are only inhabited by goblins and a leader, is that subject to change? Are there going to be multiple different creatures that can appear in the dungeons once the update is finished?

2. At the moment all the dungeons and primordial remnants in a world are associated with the same single Sphere, is this going to be changed? Some variety here would be nice.

3. Right now magical items only allow the user to use interactions, are there going to be magic items that apply syndromes/passive effects to their user in this update? Since a lot of the magical items in fantasy/other roguelikes rely more on passive effects than activated abilities. boots of speed, gauntlets of strength, ring of protection, etc.

Are you planning to expand upon the possible effects of magical items before the release of adventure mode?

1. I have a long list of things I'd like to do with them, which includes various population changes.  But for the purposes of getting the beta complete, goblins are reliable because they were ready made to not starve to death.  Any other creature placed in there needs to get a special syndrome etc etc to not just die, or else be procedural.  So goblins were first.

2. Each world is different, and we just wanted something to start with.  I didn't want to build anything intricate since this is pre-myth-gen and the upcoming myth-gen is how we wanted to do sphere associations.  The purposes of these mythical dungeons is to give the player something "low level" and reliable to support the chosen tutorial.  How that evolves and is incorporated into myth-gen to still provide reliable tutorialization while becoming vastly more interesting is a challenge we'll have to tackle soon.

3. The adventure mode release needs to happen as soon as we can manage it, so I'm probably just going to focus on the tutorial and related issues from now up to the release.  But of course we'd like to greatly expand what magical items do.  I'm just taking quick routes for this pre-myth-gen pass on things, to provide any interest at all in the tutorial dungeons.  I know they are pretty uninteresting, but it will get better after the beta ends.

I am curious, what country did Tarn Adams move to when he got married?

I’m curious if Toady One visited ThreeToe for Thanksgiving and also what dishes were served at his Thanksgiving meal.

I've moved to the UK.  There isn't a Thanksgiving here, but I had a chicken sandwich with cranberries from a coffee shop.

[Urist Mchateselves]

Thank you for your answers Toady. Have a nice day.

[PlumpHelmetMan]

Thanks for the answers, Toady!

[KristoffPL]

Thanks for the answers Toady, and hope you feel comfy in your new home!

A few quick questions:
- Will there be an option to turn the tutorials off completely? It's a bit annoying that you see the pop-up appear every single time you enter the embark mode, I've accidentally went into the tutorial mode a few times by misclicking.
- Will future updates in addition to new systems also quietly add new "stuff"? As in, not mechanics, but more creatures, minerals, materials etc.
- What is the currently the graphical stuff that is yet to be added and will likely take the most amount of work? Is it ocean waves by any chance?

[jecowa]

Top of the morning to you, sir Adams!

Now that it is made in Uk, is Dwarf Fortress a British game?

Just having a laugh. Cheerio!

[FantasticDorf]

Thanks for the reply Toady.

Hopefully British restaurant culture might help you find some inspiration, so that all the dwarves can jog on down to the Dwarven Toby-Carvery or Peri-Peri restaurant and gorge themselves on some sweet-meats, syrups, and whatever else the cooks manage to cobble together until plates are empty and time is up.

A few quick questions:
- Will there be an option to turn the tutorials off completely? It's a bit annoying that you see the pop-up appear every single time you enter the embark mode, I've accidentally went into the tutorial mode a few times by misclicking.
- Will future updates in addition to new systems also quietly add new "stuff"? As in, not mechanics, but more creatures, minerals, materials etc.
- What is the currently the graphical stuff that is yet to be added and will likely take the most amount of work? Is it ocean waves by any chance?

1. You can get around it with DFhack which auto-dismisses it, but i agree it can get a bit grating, its there and normally has to be on to catch 100% of new users along with old DF players,  but it'll never not be funny to introduce people to 47.05 and see what kind of wacky things they infer from the game-world and how that manifests in how they play as the information gets filled in by experience (if there was no DFwiki or great community resources, old DF would be ultra niche).

2. Quiet stuff is often undocumented stuff that falls down the cracks because its overshadowed by a such large changes (how to detail the entire movement of 47.05 to 50.01 had a lot of quiet changes, not nearly revamping the entire structure of the game), but nearly everything ver to ver usually to do with RAW's is in `file changes.txt` in the DF root folder.

[astix]

Congrats Toady! I Wish you and your beloved many happy memories together.

After that, for even some basic things I want to do with magic, I require multi-step scripts that can refer back to variables and so forth, and it was just looking like I needed to make a scripting language.  And that would be too much, when scripting languages exist when a history of use in games, which also solve the forgotten beast problem.  So we arrived here.  The happy world of scripts generating scripts using a standard scripting language.
[..]
As long as it remains performant, we'll just keep expanding over time, and try to make new features compliant immediately if large problems don't arise, etc.  Currently optimistic!

1. Raws generation for the initial release, but it gives us the opportunity for run-time use down the road, since it's already in the system.
[..]
One-based indexing is absolutely hideous, maximum engineer-brain, and much of the code I've written so far demonstrates its ugliness fantastically
[..]
4. Which ones? The Lua systems you see here are already old systems rewritten to use Lua, the code included in the game is all code that used to be in C++.

I thought I'd just leave this here, in case the option was not known:

https://root.cern/cling/ :

Cling is an interactive C++ interpreter, built on the top of LLVM and Clang libraries.

https://github.com/root-project/root/tree/master/interpreter/cling :

Cling implements the read-eval-print loop (REPL) concept, in order to leverage rapid application development. Implemented as a small extension to LLVM and Clang, the interpreter reuses their strengths such as the praised concise and expressive compiler diagnostics.

I believe Cling is the fastest interpreter available - faster than LUA? - as Cling is used by CERN as a faster alternative to the old CINT of the Root project. Cling is no doubt stress tested on algorithmic-y code, similar to procedural generation algorithms.

Cling is licensed under LGPL by CERN. This means it can be used in DF:
https://github.com/root-project/root/blob/master/interpreter/cling/LICENSE.TXT

The original Clang is licensed under the permissive Apache 2.0 license these days which is also fine for use in DF: https://github.com/llvm-mirror/clang/blob/master/LICENSE.TXT

Use of Cling/Clang basically allows embedding a interpreter/compiler within DF. It should allow scripts to generate code which are then compiled to DLLs to get the fastest performance. For example, this could allow scripts during world generation to create compiled code that runs when the game is played. All in C/C++.

There are LUA to C++ machine translators, if there's code that's been moved to LUA and improved for the magic system already.

These tools might also be good for "rapid application development" in DF, as advertised - think quickly copying a function from compiled space into scripting space, then rapidly iterating on procedural algorithms without recompiling and restarting each time - then copying code back with no changes needed. Unlike when using LUA.

Just in case you find Cling useful.

As long as it remains performant, we'll just keep expanding over time [..]

As for being performant - I think the limit of scripts creating compiled DLLs might be reduced benefit from whole program optimisation aka Link Time Optimisation. It shouldn't matter that much. With JIT compiled scripts that run during gameplay, performance will be slower.

One impact of performance on general development that is easily overlooked, is if something slows down the time for the testing loop: start the game and test out a change in-game, close, make a change to code or data, then restart and get back into the game. It's something seemingly insignificant, but could make a large impact on development. If the testing loop takes too long people also lose track of their thoughts. This applies even be when iterating on something simple like texture - which could be avoided by having a debug menu to reload assets/scripts. But even testing bugs and saves involves restarting a lot. If world generation is being tested then slowdown due to scripting would be impactful.


Q1: Healing Magic. Will healing magic need substantial rules constraining use in fighting, for the usage to be plausible with what people would do if that magic was available in real life?

It seems magic healing would normally promote the use of "high alpha" weapons - ones that are one-hit-kill or do a debilitating amount of damage. People would sacrifice other aspects of warfare for a chance to take out enemies. They'd use overwhelming force whenever possible. They'd target healers as a priority. They'd focus on anything that prevented healers from applying healing, including disruptive magics and substances if they existed. On the flip-side, people would prioritise protection for healers, and focus on fetch squads to bring the injured to protected healing areas. The rich and the powerful would have an army of healers monopolising rarer healing resources.

As a real world example, in warfare, sometimes armies use horrible debilitating but non-lethal weapons to try to overload medics, to slow down advances, and stop medics from being free to patch up minor injuries to get warriors back up.

Fantasy stories tend to just focus on the protagonist's party or side using healing, and handwave that the societies' focus on healing and disrupting healing is balanced everywhere. DF has the problem that the opponents side and technology could be anything - even Dwarves, and the player could be in a lot of the possible situations. Plausibility aside, players will take advantage of tatics abusing healing, even if the AI won't.

Q2:

As I understand it from following DF over the years:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

DF's procedural myth and magic setup is to be different every time, so people can enjoy learning the rules and myth behind magic, similar to the discovery when getting into a new fantasy game franchise for every world...

With this, I can see a situation where people want the same rough procedural setup of myth and magic for multiple different worlds - even if the specifics are different for every world.

For example they might find a setup where powerful people killed the original gods and took their power to become something like gods themselves, and then tried to rewrite history pretending they were the original gods to throw off would be usurpers. Maybe those gods were keeping something at bay and now it's running unchecked. Maybe the gods experimented and opened a doorway into another plane and let in demonic hordes. Maybe a cataclysmic event opened a rift between two worlds in different dimensions with their own sets of gods, and now there's a war - and possibly 2 competing magic systems. Maybe a cataclysmic event let in another type of magic, force of nature, runic or ley line system. Maybe they liked a particular setup of a pantheon and forces.

Big supernatural events don't all happen before year 0. Events like rifts or worlds colliding might be scheduled to happen after X years regardless of what gods and sapients did - so players might want the same event to be scheduled in a different world after some years.

(For those that don't know, IIRC Toady has mentioned the ability to have multiple worlds, different planes, and map changing cataclysms as part of the 3-4 year map restructure, myth, and magic arc. So distinctive setups like mentioned above are on the cards AIUI.)

The exact proc gen capabilities aren't important - what I'm trying to get at is, in a procedural system, there will inevitably be some flavours of myth and magic people really like to recreate. They'll want to keep the rough myth and magic setup, but let the specifics change to keep it interesting - and let the other parts of world generation be different as normal.

At the other end of the scale, ending up with a completely different myth and magic setup because a player didn't like the shape of the landmasses and re-rolled the RNG makes it hard to get desired generations.

Q2: Is it possible to design, from the start, to separate parts of the myth and magic procedural setup from other elements of world generation? Such that people can use a similar flavour of myth and magic setup on different worlds. Maybe have a combination of parameters outlining the general shape of myth and magic setup, and compartmentalise parts of the myth and magic procedural generation using different PRNG seeds players can copy/paste... Or is everything likely to be causally linked, and un-entagleable?. I'm asking now as it may be hard to change in 4+ years..

Players may like to share interesting myth and magic setups - they may want to view some of the hidden spoilery myth and magic output, and re-roll until they get a acceptable result. Sort of like a "re-generate" button during map generation to get different landmass shapes and types with the same advanced world gen parameters - which also would be a nice feature.


Edit:limegreen for questions only