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[Tormy]

quote:Originally posted by scjohnno:
<STRONG>So if I'm understanding the most recent update, we're going to have human (even elf?) migrants in our fortresses, working alongside our dwarves?

Will this mean we'll be able to produce human-sized clothes and armour?</STRONG>

Huh? Where have you seen this information? I doubt that we can have human/elven migrants. I think that human migrants will only settle down in Human cities, and the elves will only settle down in elvish cities.

*EDIT*

Now I know whatcha mean, I've seen the 1/27 update. Wow! This sounds very odd! Human/elven migrants will settle down in a dwarven fortress? This is...weird?!
 :eek:

[ January 28, 2007: Message edited by: Tormy ]

[OldMiner]

quote:Originally posted by Tormy:
<STRONG>
and the elves will only settle down in elvish cities.
</STRONG>

Sinew Clothspin, 'Woodcutter', has been miserable lately.  She was forced to harm a beautiful tree lately.  She was sad to be unable to sleep under the good sky lately.  She has missed the lush treetops lately.

[Fieari]

That just makes me want to be able to take slaves in battle, just so I can force some bleeding elves to be miserable like that.

[Toady One]

This is still in progress, and it's not meant to be a frequent event.  However, in not too long, the world is often going to be at war, and there will be scattered populations.  Some might seek refuge at your fortress, and I have to handle this.  It would be better if you could put them to work, rather than just having them sit in your meeting halls, and some of them might want to stay.  I can't imagine the elves wanting to stay for long, but I'll be handling these things slowly.  Having these rough implementations is going to be common when I make large-scale changes.  Eventually, you'll need to be able to make clothing for them, and they'll need culture-specific thoughts, but that might not happen for a while.  There's a lot to do.  I'll try to keep the play experience reasonable, but I can't promise anything while I'm still sorting everything out.

[Walker]

Sounds pretty spiffy to me any way you parse it  

Just reading the phrase 'saw a group of migrants going to the local ale house' gave the good kind of shivers.

I am really looking forward to seeing how this does or doesn't work  

[Abalieno]

Some comments on the future plans:

It all sounds awesome. It seems as if the game is moving toward some kind of RTS layer where you don't play in your own "tile" of the fortress, but also go out and use and play with the whole generated world and have an impact on it.

During the last developments I read some critics on a forum that I also agree with. Here's the relevant parts:
 

quote:The only part of the game that is really well developed is the first few bits IMO. After you figure out farming, and making enough food/drink along with producing basic items there isn't much more to do in the game.

It seems after at this point the gameplay sort of falls apart and doesn't make any sense. You have lots of items you can make but most of them are utterly pointless, and then you have nobles who just seem designed to annoy. The more I play the more I feel it's not about dwarves at all. I feel more like a mountain eating monster who's trying to keep my virus (the dwarves) satiated. If I had to image a dwarf city game it would be much different than DF.

I would really change quite a bit. I just don't get a sense of adventure out of the game and I find most of the gameplay very bland once you figure it out. There is no back and forth elements really. You don't have to adjust anything once you figure things out.

Take collapses for example, the only real rule is you can't dig larger than 6x6. Pretty boring once you figure it out (or read it in the wiki), I'd rather have it determined much more complexly so when you are digging out your fortress you end up being forced to create unique designs based on your environment. Just an example certain elements could support more space, others less. Perhaps that's too hard to code or whatever, but the way it is now it has no gameplay involved.

I just ultimately see lots of things in DF still being at the gimmick stage, but I do hope it changes.

I've been checking the development log regularly and I haven't seen anything that yet that makes me excited. I just wish they'd add/develop the big gameplay features first instead of what seems like a never ending stream of minutia.

I think there's some constructive criticism in there. I like a lot the detail of the game but I agree that it has somewhat a bland role in the structure of the game.

I think this new layer about migrants and armies could be used not just to add more "minutia" but also to provide goals to the players. It's fun playing in a sandbox but I think it would be even more fun to set more clearly a number of goals along the way. Some more "game-y" stuff that keeps the player hooked and motivated.

In fewer words: well defined goals (and rewards). Well spread through the whole game cycle. So an attempt to unify the freeform sandbox with more directed play (that should then variable depending on the generated elements and different ways to complete goals).

And also more truly freeform, reactive organization, instead of just having to figure out the "ideal" order to build and manage things as they were thought by the game designer.

[ January 31, 2007: Message edited by: Abalieno ]

[Toady One]

I read that criticism around the time it was posted, and I didn't get anything out of it.  It seems to ignore the development pages completely and that the game is not even close to completion.

Of course the first part of the game is more polished -- not only was it play-tested more, but the first part relies less on unimplemented dev features more than the later parts of the game.  

Armies are not intended as part of a laundry list of minutiae.  This is clear from the dev pages.  I don't think the word "gimmick" is fair.  The game isn't done -- the things I've supposedly wasted time on to glitz up the game are going to be used later. I'd even say at this point that adding armies now was a mistake brought about by my own impatience, though I'm going to continue on with it.  I can't just throw all the sweeping arcs in all at once -- there isn't enough meat in the game for them to work well in many cases.

It's not clear to me what you mean by well-defined goals.  I reject the notion of goals being necessary, though I understand that some players would probably play longer if they were given more direction.  It certainly isn't true of all players, and if the goals became too intrusive, I wouldn't play the game myself, and I wouldn't want them at all in the first place.  There are definitely a few things about the way that DF is set up that qualify as intrusive, but the ones I can think of are placeholders -- the game isn't done, but I wanted it to be playable without just stopping in the middle when I released the alpha.  The end game is a placeholder.  The nobles are a placeholder.  The economy is a placeholder.  The sequence of features located with the mountain is a placeholder.

Instead of having the computer generate goals, I'd say it's more important for the player to have the power to do the things they want to do, and for these things to be as challenging as they'd like to make them.  If the player can't find enough to do with the world, then they can move on to another game.  I'm not surprised when people get bored with what's there right now.  I'm glad some people are sticking with it, but I doubt as a player that I would still be here after an initial play in August with the pace of development as it is, but I'd check back in a year or two.  And hopefully I'd be pleasantly surprised at that time.

[Abalieno]

quote:Originally posted by Toady One:
[QB]I read that criticism around the time it was posted, and I didn't get anything out of it.  It seems to ignore the development pages completely and that the game is not even close to completion.

Of course the first part of the game is more polished -- not only was it play-tested more, but the first part relies less on unimplemented dev features more than the later parts of the game.  

Armies are not intended as part of a laundry list of minutiae.  This is clear from the dev pages.  I don't think the word "gimmick" is fair.

Yeah, the quote came out about the time you were working on fire, dyes and things like that. I love that kind of detail and simulation but they can be seen as minutiae and micromanagement that aren't really directly "fun" and relevant.

I think his point is that the initial discovery is very fun, but after it is made these elements don't come together to make a real game with challenges to overcome. Not many interesting twists.

Of course these critics are to be considered for the longer term. If you know your goals and that these "flaws" are result of temporary compromises, then it's all good.

About well-defined goals I mean outlining better some goals. At the beginning of the game the goal is to have enough food, then start to organize the rooms and workshops. After a point things become a little too hectic. There's a drift that seems to lead nowhere. I saw your plans about the armies and traveling as a very good premise for a more involving "late" game.

As you toss random armies to the fortress, I don't think it could be bad to add semi-scripted situations that provide some context and short-term goals. I mean something that makes a game different from the other, situations that can steer the game and that you have to react with.

Even a spark of adventuring right into the Fortress mode couldn't be bad.

My opinion is that directed play and sandbox can go along. A set goal could still be a choice. A player who is looking for direction and motivation could accept it, while another could ignore it till later in the game.

[Mechanoid]

Dont under-estimate sand boxes. People have built 5-foot castles before, and will do so in the future, adding yet more height to what was already established.

quote:Originally posted by Toady One:
If the player can't find enough to do with the world, then they can move on to another game.

I dont agree with this statement.

It should be "If the player can't find, create, or wait for things to do with the world, then they can wait for me to finish the game and play it then."

[Toady One]

I think one of the issues is that some of this criticism seems to be coming from a "Dwarf-centric" perspective.  Fire seems superfluous for dwarf mode, but it's foundational for adventure mode, for example.

I think that semi-scripted situations aren't in the spirit of the game, at least as we intend it.  The current random armies are getting tossed at some point, perhaps even once I get the part I'm working on done.  What's going on in the world at the time should determine what you face during play, consistent with the history generated in prior games and during world gen.  There are some issues with this, such as early "unfair" defeats, or having games in boring areas, but these can be avoided (or sought out) without resorting to scripts.  It is the world being played, not an individual fortress, although certainly playing a given fortress should be fun.  The current attacks on your dwarves are placeholders in the sense of my last post.

As for adding adventure elements to dwarf mode, there are many examples of this up on dev.

He he he, Mechanoid -- we have a similar view if you include a few sentences beyond the one you quoted.  I wasn't talking about moving along permanently, but people looking for a certain experience from the game won't get it right now.

[ February 01, 2007: Message edited by: Toady One ]

[Abalieno]

quote:I think that semi-scripted situations aren't in the spirit of the game, at least as we intend it.

This doesn't contradict what I meant. A semi-scripted situation may still come as the result of prerequisites. You create the conditions for these "twists" to happen and then you use the dynamic rules that regulate the world to bring everything together in a realistic way.

Probably what I intend for more directed play is just a matter of presentation more than changing game mechanics (like making dwarves express their needs more clearly, which may then become a cue for the player to figure out what should be done next or how to overcome a problem). I should think more about this and study the thing.

About the armies and the rest. The idea I got was the possibility to organize an expedition and then create a colony somewhere else. This would lead to not just take control of the original fortress and keep it alive. But slowly moving toward building an "empire". Moving an army could lead to the conquest of a city and at the end it could really become a game about empires at war and an economic/resource system between hubs.

Wars could then be the result of failed diplomacy, threats, unfulfilled requests and so on. I don't think this goes against the idea you have of the game. But I'm also aware that before you can get there there's A LOT of groundwork to be done.

One simpler thing I'd like to see now that you are working on migrants is about giving more control to the player without resorting to cheap tricks like trapping them in a room to make them die. Instead I'd like to have the possibility to choose to accept a group of migrant or to refuse to take them with me.

I'd like the pressure of the yearly migrants (that is now eased through tricks) to be removed and replaced with more excused challenges.

[Gakidou]

Somewhat off-topic, but... The recent developments list, "Handled stranded vegitation"? I wonder what that means...

[Toady One]

I'm handling the offloading of sections of the map as the adventurer moves around.  When things are shifted out of view, it has to deal with them, although that particular entry might be outmoded now.  It's sort of a messy problem, but I hope to make some progress tomorrow.  Today was a work day.  I had to take a detour through seemless maps, or I'll never be able to add them.  Then I can get armies back on track with the proper foundations.

[Fieari]

Seamless maps... would that mean having no "edge boundaries" within a location, such that you can go from "map square" to "map square" without first visiting the large huge map?

Does this have implications for Fortress Mode, such as providing more (read: as large as the mountain range) landscape to dig out?

[Toady One]

Yeah, what it's doing now is creating 16x16 mid-level 48x48 squares within each world map square (a town is 3x3 of these, a dwarf game is 10x10).  I thought the obstacles would make it not worth the trouble originally, but a few weeks ago I sorted it out, so I think it'll be fine now, after some rough patches.

Making the dwarf game scroll around like that is a different story, depending on what you'd expect it to remember.  It's a lot of data, and the jobs can be fairly complicated, so the current ideas for larger fortresses are limited to non-seamless operations, such as a shift of focus to a deeper mining operation at a season change or something.  Hopping around more frequently would be too inconsistent as things stand now and that would let you escape from situations by abstracting them away briefly.

[ February 06, 2007: Message edited by: Toady One ]