Print

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

[BirdoPrey]

Do you think with this new release there'll be a good gameplay reason for the arbitrary z-level cap?

[Aqizzar]

Good gameplay reason: keeps your computer from choking on all the sky.

I'm more curious about this world-spanning underground-layer ability.  Will adventurers be able to get down there and roam around?  Preferably with fast-travel, unlike the current tunnels?

[Dakk]

World spanning underground layers with large populations...

BricksBlocks will be shath.

[Neonivek]

Ugh, I havn't had a question or suggestion in a while. Ohh well.

[GlyphGryph]

I'd like to see a race that tame giant worm creature to dig them passages underground, which they use to invade forts/settlements/caves. Giant purring maggots?

If it's giant, chitinous, travels underground, and is fearsome enough to be worshipped, I want to see my dwarves conquer it...

I actually modded a race like that into my game. The worms, not the race that tames them. Of course, they enslaved all the dwarves rather than the other way around - Of course, my giant worms with tentacle faces didn't do much more with their tunnels than current races do, (aka nothing) but they did like enslaving dwarves, thats for sure. That was actually I pretty fun mod, since they were carnivorous which definitely changes gameplay, I should probably put it up sometime...

Err, anyways, on topic. I'm really hoping to see the complete removal of "underground rivers" and instead allow rivers to actually go underground (especially in limestone regions and the like) and flow that way before bursting out forther downhill. It will probably be a while before boats are in though, so I suppose if people wan't them navigable that wouldn't actually work.

It's good to know we'll finally be getting endless (or at least longer duration) sieges from chasms and the like, but I wonder if it will be different than currently, where that would just mean they'll keep accumulating on the lowest cliff and never be able to reach me.

Hmmm... I wonder if HFS will be a "world spanning layer"...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Pierce it anywhere, and you let out ALL the demons in the world! Now THERE'S an endgame. Especially if your adventurer can descend into the hole to explore this new world spanning layer.

[Greiger]

Spoiler: Suggestion inspired by above.  Bigtime HFS spoilers (click to show/hide)

Be awesome if it ended up being a randomised world underground too.  Randomly generated while exploring it as big as the overworld without fast travel, populated with powerful (respawning daily) demons.  Random useful items (food, weapons, armor, clean water) placed to give an adventurer a chance of survival yet still making it incredibly difficult.  Map gets saved so a later adventurer encounters the same areas if already visited.

Maybe even impossible to access in dwarf mode(whithout sending an army there)  So it gives more meat to adventure mode, by allowing a player to see how long they can keep their multi-legendary super adventurer alive in the depths of hell.  Or a poorly equipped adventurer gets running in to try to get some easy gear only to become lost fleeing from the spirits of fire that just happened to be placed by the bottom of the stairs.

Of course it would need some kind of access point...maybe a spiral stair going around in a circle into a glowing pit.  Maybe spawns a demon or 10 a couple times a year. I can imagine some players seeking that out just to embark on top of it and create a suitably evil looking castle.  Even if they can't access the underworld in the mode.

Nothing to see here you people who donno bout HFS.  Go throw a cat off a tower.

[Neonivek]

Nothing to see here you people who donno bout HFS

Unfortunately I think we will have to wait until the Version 2 arcs before we get something like that... which isn't going to happen for a long LONG while. A Shame too.

[Footkerchief]

It's good to know we'll finally be getting endless (or at least longer duration) sieges from chasms and the like, but I wonder if it will be different than currently, where that would just mean they'll keep accumulating on the lowest cliff and never be able to reach me.

It sounds like Toady's specifically aiming to avoid the cliff situation.  This is from when he did a quick first pass on underground stuff a couple months ago (emphasis mine):

10/15/2008: All right, sorting out the underground revisions... we'd like to get a framework in place that can recapture some of the better properties of the 2D version without conceding any ground. The general idea is to set up a few world gen params that will allow you to control the frequency and nature of underground features that you might encounter, especially as you mine in dwarf mode.

If many features are requested, they'd need to be arranged in such a way their discovery is inevitable while at the same time providing some breathing room for a fortress. So the first issue is that some (not most, fortunately) of the code still more or less has the map features stored as 2D rather than 3D objects, so that I can't currently layer features over each other. Once features can be placed over each other in 3D, we can have entire layers devoted to this and that, boxed in by this and that on their sides, twisted around with this, with that over there. So you'd hit something. I'm also planning to push more of it into the existing system (used for HFS) that creates units, items, fluids etc. as they are discovered to avoid FPS hits from the increased feature density.

Another issue present in 2D that is largely absent now are some interesting and long-lasting challenges from map features after (or before) they are discovered. Previously, you'd be attacked or otherwise perturbed by ambushing critters of various sorts. So we'll have that, at least what we had before. The gremlin needs to be your buddy again. And new buddies. It's no fun to spoil the specifics though.

There will have to be a lot of specific remodeling to facilitate this process. Chasms for example don't support creatures moving around as they stand -- a lot of the silliness like critters sitting on bizarre ledges for no reason will have to be changed. Features can't support populations versus your fortress properly if they don't have off-map access points (without something strange like monster generators), so more features will be large enough to make more sense that way.

Practically speaking, I'm going to start with the 2D -> 3D conversion and clean up some other code that'll allow me to add things easily and to add them over larger patches of the map than the single world map squares that are used right now. After that, I'd like to get it up to around the point of interest and excitement from the 2D version for thems that wants it, though as I mentioned previously, I'm only going to be working on this for long enough to get a framework established, then I'm going to go back and do the remaining work on this release in its proper order.

[Sowelu]

I'm imagining the deepest parts as being kind of like honeycombs.  Maybe with tons of boring rock between 'em.  Maybe they're like little bubbles.  Iunno.

As for navigating in underground features OH GOD PLEASE YES.  All sorts of games have multiple maps you can roam around on.  All sorts of games have dynamic maps.  Very few games have maps where the EXISTENCE of the map at ALL is dynamic!

Now I have happy Avernum memories.  I wasn't fond of the gameplay, but boy, the concept sure was cool.

[InsanityPrelude]

Damn, guys, he's only human.

I think. 

[Dwarfu]

Quick jump into the other unfinished business category (for the next round of questioning)...

Regarding this:

Change some instances of color over to color patterns

Do you mean swapping out a color flag for a color token, and if so, do you have an idea of which systems you'll do this round?

[KaelGotDwarves]

I look forward to modding in Hell beneath the world, make underground creatures significantly tougher than above ground. Above-grounders will have to fight for survival

[Footkerchief]

Quick jump into the other unfinished business category (for the next round of questioning)...

Regarding this:

Change some instances of color over to color patterns

Do you mean swapping out a color flag for a color token, and if so, do you have an idea of which systems you'll do this round?

It actually refers to more sophisticated patterns like stripes and spots.  There were some iris color patterns in the raw preview a few months ago.

[Tormy]

I look forward to modding in Hell beneath the world, make underground creatures significantly tougher than above ground. Above-grounders will have to fight for survival

We don't know that what's gonna happen in the new version at all. Perhaps the chasm/underground creatures will be tough enough in the vanilla game even....I think that this would be optimal: ratmen,  antmen, batmen etc. shouldn't be that strong, but they should attack in big numbers. Yes, that is zerg style, baby! Some other creatures like troglodytes should be much tougher, but they shouldn't attack in masses.

What does "creature interactions" means exactly? It has something to do with the reproduction of the underground creatures perhaps?

I think it means the dwarves slaughtering or getting slaughtered by the creatures, which will keep arriving from off-map access points in underground features.

Oh...yeah that is possible.

[LegacyCWAL]

Spoiler: Suggestion inspired by above.  Bigtime HFS spoilers (click to show/hide)

Be awesome if it ended up being a randomised world underground too.  Randomly generated while exploring it as big as the overworld without fast travel, populated with powerful (respawning daily) demons.  Random useful items (food, weapons, armor, clean water) placed to give an adventurer a chance of survival yet still making it incredibly difficult.  Map gets saved so a later adventurer encounters the same areas if already visited.

Maybe even impossible to access in dwarf mode(whithout sending an army there)  So it gives more meat to adventure mode, by allowing a player to see how long they can keep their multi-legendary super adventurer alive in the depths of hell.  Or a poorly equipped adventurer gets running in to try to get some easy gear only to become lost fleeing from the spirits of fire that just happened to be placed by the bottom of the stairs.

Of course it would need some kind of access point...maybe a spiral stair going around in a circle into a glowing pit.  Maybe spawns a demon or 10 a couple times a year. I can imagine some players seeking that out just to embark on top of it and create a suitably evil looking castle.  Even if they can't access the underworld in the mode.

Nothing to see here you people who donno bout HFS.  Go throw a cat off a tower.

That gives me an awesome idea!  And like all awesome ideas, it is shamelessly stolen from one of the greatest games of all time

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Say there's this demon-world you mention, and everybody believes in it and has some vague idea about what it's like, but no concrete info.

Now, on a completely unrelated note, say that somebody (undoubtedly a dwarf) figures out a way to transport objects between two points almost instantly.  It works perfectly with rocks and elf corpses.  However, when they try it with surplus soapers brave volunteers, most come out the other end as a gooey red paste, and those who don't are little better than gibbering morons.

And then, one of the research forts is overrun by demons while the fort at the other end of the rapid-transit experiment vanishes.  No bodies, no strewn equipment, not even the fort's tunnels: just a big, empty hole in the mountain.

So the researchers' race sends in an army, which is promptly slaughtered.

At that point, the demons are pretty much running rampant in a gradually-expanding area surrounding the non-vanished research fort.  If you go there with an adventurer or dwarf-mode army, you find out that the rapid-transport system worked by sending the transported objects through the big HFS.  Needless to say, the demons figured out how to use this system to get out of their HFS-world and into the mortal realm.