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[Tamren]

quote:Originally posted by Rollory:
<STRONG>PG58 - yes, what WERE you thinking?

We already have tentacle demons and the dwarves to admire them for their corrupt intentions.  This game is going to make the depravity of people who starve their Sims pale in comparison.</STRONG>

Who says it doesnt already!  

[Axe of Agor]

PowerGoal29, EVIDENCE OF SHAME, (Future): The wound of a kobold's contaminated spear begins to fester, but with the aid of magic herbs it heals, leaving a horrible scar.

Yes, I'm sure that being violated by a kobold's "spear" would scar one for life, and would indeed cause one a great feeling of shame. Where ever is Freud when you need him?  

Still, I do like most of these power goals, and most especially their names ("scream ball" . . . heh heh heh). I really must wonder, though, how randomly generated beasts would work. Would mundane creatures be generated off of a base archetype (such as BIG CAT, FLIGHTLESS BIRD, CEPHALOPOD), so that they have some semblance of sanity while still having differences between them, while magical creatures could be formed more randomly and weirdly?

I suppose that way you could have a world populated by more or less recognisable creatures (like lions, ostriches, and squids) while still having them seem unique (like a kind of lion that lives in the frozen snows of the south, and whose fur is hoary white; or a kind of ostrich that can run faster than a cheetah, and who has a taste for meat; or a small blue squid capable of electrocuting those who get near it -- note that they wouldn't necessarily have to be called lions, ostriches, and squids, but could merely bear some semblance to them). For more bizarre beasties, we could always have all sorts of weird chimeras, like a giant mammal with multiple heads, tentacles, hundreds of tiny legs, and a blood-sucking proboscis.

[PTTG?]

I found something I thought was very Dwarfy. It just goes to show that we ain't the only ones with Noble Trouble.

Queen Elizabeth I created an office called ' The Official Uncorker Of Sea-Bottles', after a fisherman in Cornwall found an important official secret in a bottle washed up on the beach. Any person not handing over such bottles to the Officer was liable to be hanged.

The most costly dress ever made was worn by Marie de Medici, Queen of France, in 1622. The dress was embroidered with 3,000 diamonds and 39,000 pearls - at today's values it would be worth £6,000,000. The Queen only wore the dress once, then discarded it.

One morning in 1798, as Czar Paul I of Russia was inspecting his guards, he was infuriated by a soldier's cloak button, which hadn't been polished. In a rage the Czar ordered: 'About turn - march!'. When asked where to, he shouted: 'Siberia!' The 400 men dutifully set off on the 2,000 mile march - and were never heard of again.

I suppose the Brits better hope none of the royal's hear of DF!

Also:
A West Indian millionaire was having a house built and asked for a statue in every room. When it was finished he ignored all the fine sculptures and complained bitterly to the builder.When the builder asked what kind of statues he wanted, he made a gesture indicating picking up the phone and said, "Statue?"

[ September 26, 2007: Message edited by: PTTG? ]

[Fieari]

Toady, I have a question.  What sort of system are you using now for cave-ins?  Did you see the various algorithms in the suggestion forum?  I rather liked the idea that different kinds of rocks had different strengths...

[The_Hawk]

Hey, leeches.  Might we expect the ham-handed dwarven medical staff to try the occasional bloodletting as a curative?

[sclark13]

Last night I had a miraculous dream of Dwarf Fortress. Miraculous because it was during a coughing fit of sleep and its amazing I slept at all. Now first I'd like to say I have always been satisfied with the ascii tileset graphics, and feel it is sufficient enough to convey any meaning put forward in the game. But in this dream, the Dwarf Fortress I was playing didn't have the regular ascii graphics. Instead, this dream was full of the bright vibrant colors and sprites of a super nintendo game much like Zelda: A Link to the Past. Not only that, but the new z-axis was visually represented onscreen by being set as the background of the current layer. The background layer was zoomed out a little more, and was blurred to give the effect of distance. When I woke up coughing, I realized this GUI is very possible for the future of Dwarf Fortress, and more importantly Toady may have already thought of this, or read this, and decide to implement it in the near future. Simultaneously viewing layers would greatly aid in the ease of gameplay. While I believe it is possible for the future to hold higher resolution and detailed tiles/creatures, I realize that is something reserved for the very last of releases.

I'd just like to say that I am very anxious to see the next release, I believe it will be a completely different game than we are all familiar with.

[Name Lips]

I had a dream about DF too. I dreamed that the new version had come out, and I was trying to figure out how to convince my wife I was sick. I also had to call into work, which is complicated because I have to arrange for a substitute.

Then I woke up almost thinking that the next version HAD come out, and feeling guilty that I was planning on lying to my wife and cheating the disadvantaged kids I teach out of their education just to play it for one day.

[Solara]

quote:Originally posted by PTTG?:
<STRONG>I found something I thought was very Dwarfy. It just goes to show that we ain't the only ones with Noble Trouble.</STRONG>

If only us humans had adopted the fine tradition of Mandate Processing from our enlightened dwarven friends, the world would be a much better place.

[AlStar]

quote: Req480, DWARVES ON FIRE, (Future): Dwarves should really handle themselves a bit better when they are around fire. They should start by recognizing that it's actually a problem to be on fire.

I just love the dry humor that fills everything Toady writes. He makes even reading lists of todo tasks entertaining.

[Athmos]

quote:Originally posted by Solara:
<STRONG>

If only us humans had adopted the fine tradition of Mandate Processing from our enlightened dwarven friends, the world would be a much better place.</STRONG>

Revolution by plumbing  

[ September 26, 2007: Message edited by: Athmos ]

[Asehujiko]

Mario & Luigi are the Dr. Joseph-Ignace Guillotin of df.

[Toady One]

My first idea for randomly generated beasts would be to roughly follow what was done in Armok I.  That would be to combine a body type with a way of fleshing it out.  So you could have "humanoid" + "mammal", and "mammal" has a wide but fitting range of parameters.  The body type could also be randomized, but it would be a bit more careful about that.  If you can get Armok I to work, you can look through the form/motif/creature editors to see how crazy it was before.  More restraint might be used this time, but that's the kind of thing I'm thinking of.  You can cut the title screen with your mouse, incidentally.

I read the cave-in algorithms thread, but nothing really jumped out.  Not that I've done much in terms of practical results.  I'm basically interested in trying to do things that are a little less local, rather than trying to get things to arise from rules that are applied to cells.  So far I've just collected information about columns of rock and their connections and weights, and done a connectivity check on the resulting graph, but I should be able to use the graph of columns to handle things like hanging statue arms with some care.  For instance, it shouldn't be too hard to pit the weight of a hanging arm against how much it is shearing against a shoulder joint, because it just needs to compare the weight to the material and surface area of the join with the neighbor.  Aside from the connectivity calculation, none of this has to be calculated particularly often, so it can get fairly complicated, and the routines used to do it can also be used to provide information to the user about potential cave-ins as necessary.  I haven't really had time to get much done with it though, since we are a bit behind, so I wouldn't even say there's a system at this point.

[PresidentEvil]

Alright, I've got a question and some criticism.

Question: My programming teacher told the class yesterday that, as a rule of thumb, a professional programmer can write around 20 near-bug-free lines of code per person per day. We were also told that work quantity was a crappy benchmark, but I'm curious. How much code do you write in a day?

The "quality over quantity" argument also leads into my next point: The dev page claims 199 reported and unresolved bugs, and there are at least of couple of dealbreakers (like everything to do with fire). Even things that aren't technically bugs, for example the mad rush to loot fallen soldiers IN THE MIDDLE OF A BATTLE, are issues that would be downright embarassing to any professional company. I know you aren't a professional company and it's unreasonable to expect instant perfection. I also know you aren't EA Games, so please, at least consider wiping out most of the current problems before you start work on the next Big Thing. I'd hate to see such a good project die because all the bugs start to snowball.

[Fieari]

Man, if you think the current version is buggy, wait till you see the next one!  I mean, sure, a huge amount of the old bugs are fixed in the new version (check the Reqs and look at what is now green), but I'd bet you anything that the amount of bugs in the new version will be STAGGERING.

I look forwards to hunting them down and reporting them.

[THLawrence]

quote:Originally posted by PresidentEvil:
Question: My programming teacher told the class yesterday that, as a rule of thumb, a professional programmer can write around 20 near-bug-free lines of code per person per day. We were also told that work quantity was a crappy benchmark, but I'm curious. How much code do you write in a day?

That is a horrible assessment. I am not even close to a professional programmer and the one time I did do some programming I had at least 20 lines done in an hour . I had never done C++ programing before and was guessing for most of it. There was only one bug and that my friend found. I couldn't because I was guessing on what the string did. Nothing apparently. So I think that number is a little low. Then again it was just some basic loop and variable stuff. Nothing complicated.