So yeah, it doesn't seem like there's much left on the list now. I wonder what's going to take so long that Toady doesn't think he'll get it out by year's end? All the testing that'll need to be done?
There are a bit more than 30 items left on the list. If he kept up his current rate through all of them, he would get done sometime in December. If the average time per item goes up to much more than a day and a half, it will take until the new year to complete them all. Personally, I expect the release between Christmas and the New Year, but I am overly optimistic.
Squads might end up with enough hanging annoyances to push it out of this month, though I'm still hopeful I'll be able to green it out. I'm running even with my plan for the month so far.
The underground is one of those things that I can apparently work on forever. I have more that needs to be done there, but I can probably wrap it up in a week, and I'll try to talk about it as much as possible, or at least have something to talk about there.
Butchery/rot will probably take more than a day, and a few of those others might also take longer, though I don't see why that would be from here. I know there are some lingering irritations with reactions.
The "explore minor compat issues" could take a few days.
The "any remaining tests" is likely to take a while. That consists of the kind of pre-release, "stop crashing!" kind of stuff I can't pass off to all of you, as well as all kinds of weird things that need tackling to get the presentation up around the low 40d standards (all wilderness tree names display as plurals now, to name one of a zillion little things that have cropped up -- they are all dirt easy to fix, but there are dozens and dozens of them), and there are a few promises I made and a few quick requests that made it in before I decided I can't take anything else on ("handle a few misc. bug reports and minor interface requests that have arisen"). You'll have more than your fair share of bugs to find, no doubt, and I'll be spending at least a month post-release cleaning those up and doing bugfix releases, as usual.
The 40d# merge will take an unknown amount of time. On paper, I just need to structure my code files the same way as 40d#, do a few easy diffs and translate over all the interface tokens into the new format. However, there's no way it's going to be that nice to me.
Anyway, I'm acting now as if I can get it out by the end of the year, and when that doesn't work out, there shouldn't be that much left.
Hey Toady, I'm just wondering, since you're going to make soldiers carry booze instead of water, would it be possible to do the same for wounded as well? While I'll admit that its part of the fun when you embark somewhere that has little available water and we will have underground sources of water that can be present in a place like a desert. I'm just wondering whether the water drinking is based off of the same code or something and would be possible to trasfer to healthcare.
Yeah, I don't think it would be that much work, but I'm hesitant to promise anything at this point. I think somebody posted ill-effects from alcoholing the wounded, although people in pain might still welcome such a thing for all I know. And a dwarf is a dwarf.
So, do kobolds not have the capacity to learn other languages, period? I'm asking from a world perspective, not the effect-of-[UTTERANCES] perspective.
The way I interpret this is that the Kobold's language has a culture of change. So a Kobold would forget a language quite quickly until it realises how its language differs from 'normal' languages. Given that Kobolds don't naturally communicate ideas, this makes a very steep inital learning curve, but it shouldn't be impossible for a Kobold to learn a 'normal' language.
Yeah, just the thought of having something stick like that seems very odd. I think their ability to recount their kills using proper names is quite odd. The name of the killed adventurer should morph over time, until it's no longer relevant.
How would you add to your game something like say this fish?
The blob fish. Which part were you talking about? I have no idea about the swimming gel density working out, but the giant nose seems easy enough. Deep fish in general are a little weird. Just having them occur is off since it's so deep, but we can start to make believe around 50 tiles down, since that's half the ocean and we don't know what a tile is anyway. I haven't done any biome separation there yet though.
Its unlikely I'll actually see the response to this, but can we specify that a workshop needs to be over water, the same way we can over magma (like some of the old 2D buildings)?
I think this was about having actual water to perform jobs instead of an initial placement over water, and there isn't an analog to magma fueling now. It wouldn't be that hard to add, and we can consider it when I do the first overhaul of the system, which'll be after this release.
Are kobolds like gremlins? (edit: As seen in the movies)
(IIRC there are/were proper gremlin creatures at one point, will these become a position within kobold society or remain a seperate species?)
No, and gremlins are on the way back! Expect to see them during this release. If I remember correctly that is.
Yeah, they should be back. The kobolds are a different thing, but the skin texture might be similar... more similar than with gizmo or whatever anyway. The furby thing.
Are there plans for the military to spar using practice bone/wooden weapons? Will dwarves switch to their main weapon when placed on duty? If no practice weapons are available, would the dwarves resort to wrestling, or practice against a dummy or imaginary foe? Are there plans for specific shield and armor training rather than it being a by-product of wearing and fighting with them? Are military units going to recognize the existence of their own belongings or will they leave clothes lying around without any possibly of them ever getting picked up?
I should be getting to the first ones in the dev log any time now, and I'll be sure to answer there. We have specific shield and armor training, theoretically (they should create those demonstrations, I'm just not sure I've witnessed those classes yet). They should recognize and pick up their own clothing, yeah.
Will diplomats that die in fort mode get replacements now?
I'm guessing that since there hasn't been any further mention of that placeholder, we won't see it this time around.
What I would want and likely everybody else, is to have the liason at least be replaced somehow because they are far more important than the monarch, at least on a trade basis.
Succession itself is something to be handled for later, but the placeholder for this particular issue is in the very short list of actual promises made to specific people for this release, so you'll have your liaison if it can't pull a historical one, POOF generated from scratch. The actual succession stuff is slated for after we have critters running around the world map during play, when diplomacy should be more fluid, so generation should just fade out for the real replacement.
Why do Siege Engineers not get artifacts when all of the other reasonable vanilla professions do? Is it an oversight, and if not I'm curious as to the reasoning behind that decision?
It was probably made five years ago, so I'm not sure. If I remember, both siege engineers and artifacts predate the original release, and artifacts were one of the earliest additions. Lessee... artifacts were in there in Nov 2004 at the latest, and July 2006 at the latest for siege engines (going by the old dev log, forum might have earlier dates). So my reconstructed-in-my-mind decision would be something like, "adding new siege engineer profession... name... jobs... does it get moods? nah, engine parts would be weird, ballista arrowhead might be cool but it gets consumed during ammo construction..." Probably something like that. We'll have to see how that sort of thing plays out when larger siege engines are recognized as a larger possibly moveable map unit like a boat (the current plan, anyway). It could be that they get shafted again, or they might get something.
Can we get a "percent chance" added to the [trAPAVOID] creature tag?
There are some annoyances with storing the known traps here, unless you want them to dodge and then get hit a second later by the same trap. It's not a long job since the invaders already do it (at least through diplomacy, not personal experience so much), but I don't want to get caught up before this release for another few hours testing it out (especially if I screw it up the first time).
If you mod in a race that grows to only two years old, and want to have young leaders, will you be able to?
It would be easier to do in dwarf mode. In world gen, the resolution is so coarse that even having them be born adult might not be enough if they die at two. Probably something like: 1- born, 2- placed in job, 3- die. A race that dies at three on the other hand could probably be historically significant. Two might work, but it could rely on succession doing the placement for positions... I'm not sure though. One might even work in some stumbling way. The marriage requirement might even kill two though, if they get married in the "2-" above, they could die in "3-" before the first child, but they might be able to get married in "1-" if they are born adult. Just depends on the code order.
I think this kind of got answered in the devlog, but can you create a specific type of arena, say forested arena or one made out of ice or even almost completely aquatic and save that type? I know a forested arena would be mainly aescetic, but if you are testing a critter which has so much layering that they would die of overheating when outside an arctic climate, you'll probably want to make the arena an arctic climate.
Ah, nah, you can't do anything like that. The arena mode will only grow in power though, and should eventually support buildings and other things like temperature control (which I thought I'd get to but didn't), as well as some save/load capability for maps. Right now, it is very bare.
Toady One: Feel free to leave questions unanswered if you haven't thought about the answer.
Do Kobolds have fixed names as implied by world gen, or would they frequently change their nicknames?
Using permanant names would likely mean that Kobolds choose not to establish fixed words and that the dynamic nature of their language is cultural. This helps to define whether a Kobold can learn other languages where words are established permanently.
But since DF isn't always logical, and this isn't a scientific experiment, I can ask:
Can a Kobold learn another language?
Does a Kobold prefer to reuse an old word or try to make a new one.
Nah, the fixed names are a limitation of the current system and shouldn't be how it works. I can only imagine how confusing that'll get though. It might not be a bad thing as long as it is done with some care. From my experience with the base model, using an old word is preferable, but you won't always remember an old word, and sometimes when you are screaming and patting a cat's stomach, a new word comes out.
(re: arena)
Now... can you set non-combat skills? I think the attributes are getting reworked, but will the other skills still make them stronger, faster, and tougher?
Yeah, attributes are only trained by usage now. Which is rad. Don't know about setting them for the arena though. Maybe they're hiding at the top of the skill list, or maybe you just can't.
Nah, you can't set them right now, because there's no reason to have the non-job skills. The attributes don't get trained by the settings there. You can't set attributes in any way there, which is probably something that should be added at some point.
Will the AI be any different in the arena? i.e. will goblins still try to ambush or just zerg rush the opposition?
It's a fairly mindless environment right now. Perhaps sometime, around the time formations go in, it would make sense to have more go on with their arena combat AI to test things out.
What will the functional difference between a war hammer and a mace be in the new combat system aside from using a different skill?
Also, will the skill progression be changed in any way, for any skill, from the current Dabbling->Novice->etc?
Weapons have many more parameters now, so there should be some subtle differences. Hammers probably have a smaller area on their striking surfaces, at least.
I was hoping for some elaboration beyond "there are some new differences."
Eventually, I would think if weapons ever get broken out to the raws we could start seeing some real variation in weapons.
Yeah, the difference I've got right now is the contact area. So a mace will have larger wound areas but won't concentrate the force as much. It may be that this indicates one weapon is superior to the other in most normal applications, but I haven't had a chance to test that sort of thing carefully. They currently have the same weight and velocity multipliers (indicating that the war hammer here is considered to have the same mass stuck at the same distance from the end, just shaped a little differently).
The format is ATTACK:EDGE/BLUNT:contact area:penetration size:verb2nd:verb3rd:noun:velocity multiplier
Penetration size currently only matters for edged attacks.
[ITEM_WEAPON:ITEM_WEAPON_HAMMER_WAR]
[NAME:war hammer:war hammers]
[WEIGHT:40]
[SKILL:HAMMER]
[TWO_HANDED:37500]
[MINIMUM_SIZE:32500]
[MATERIAL_SIZE:3]
[ATTACK:BLUNT:200:200:bash:bashes:NO_SUB:2000]
[ITEM_WEAPON:ITEM_WEAPON_MACE]
[NAME:mace:maces]
[WEIGHT:40]
[SKILL:MACE]
[TWO_HANDED:37500]
[MINIMUM_SIZE:32500]
[MATERIAL_SIZE:3]
[ATTACK:BLUNT:300:4000:bash:bashes:NO_SUB:2000]
I haven't changed the skill progression yet. The blank skill level name might be out since some people complained about that and there's no reason to keep it if it just causes some minor issues, but it isn't out yet.
What are the fighter and striker skills used for?
They're the general combat skills that Toady mentioned. Or at least "Fighter" is. "Striker" might be the "grasp strike" (a.k.a. punching) skill, judging by its placement.
Fighter is the general catch-all skill for knowing how to do anything in close-ranged combat which functions as a skill-synergy catcher right now. Striker is grasp strikes, yeah. I think kicking is something sorta sad... like Kicker.
What's with "Inorganic Stone Floor"? Will every stone floor or item now say "Inorganic"?
I think it is just because the Arena's floor isn't actually made up of real materials like Microline, Clay, Granite, or Orthoclaus.
It is sort of a catch all name.
Yeah, I didn't init a specific type for the arena floor, and rock/metal have the same base material category now. With that kind of bad name.
Unless I'm missing something, screenshot 16 illustrates a small bug: "Dark Gnome 1 miss Dwarf 1," rather than "misses." This looks like the bug you get in current versions when hacking in Fortress Mode combat reports -- a holdover from Adv. Mode causes the Mayor to be described in the second person, due to the expedition leader being creature 0 or whatever. That would explain why it shows up for the first creature you added.
Ah, thanks, I didn't know about that bug with the hack. It's fixed now wherever I could find it (misses, jumping away, and dropping a chunk when you attack).
Will we be able to load up zombie/skelly/undead cursed/afflicted versions of creatures?
Do such afflicted creature keep their skills?
If we give say a kobold or batman a blow gun can we give them poisoned ammo?
If a dwarf tantrums and gains some skill in throwing and teachs it to others will they actually ever use it outside of tantrums... Or will they just be better at tantruming...?
Nothing like that in the arena at this time.
They will just be better at tantruming, he he he. With the new squad/civilian equipment stuff, we are slowly crawling toward things like throwing weapons and civilian daggers (or would civilian hatchets make more sense for dwarves?), but for now there's nothing new and thrown.
I've noticed that there is a date in the upper right-hand corner of one of the sceenshots, will running Arena Mode advance the world you chose?
I think that is more equivalent to a timestamp and the arena uses a timeline that is separate from the actual Fort/Adventure mode world.
Yeah, it just has to init the date somewhere to avoid choking up the background mechanics left over from fort mode.
While we're on the topic of splitting things out into separate stuff, when you merge the new version with the 40d# stuff - would it be possible to split macro's out of the interface file into separate macro files?. Possibly even in a /data/macro folder.
I'm not very familiar with how that stuff works yet, but if it's just text i/o stuff going on in interface.txt, it shouldn't be a huge problem, unless it's linked to the keys individually in some way. I'll have to see what's going on.
Will the next version display proper material colors for all items? In last year's raws preview, mineral raws still had a DISPLAY_COLOR tag, but that seems seriously obsolete. I did find a dev log reference (several weeks before the preview) to "color/symbol stuff for items/buildings made from materials," so I'm not sure what the deal is.
I don't get "proper" here. Do you mean RGB colors? The stuff being fed through the grid system rather than the creature tile system is still heavily constrained. I don't expect that to be handled until item display gets decoupled from the font tiles. If you mean using the 16 color approximation to the RGB material color, then it should use that for items. Minerals can still be weird because when they are a wall, you can't rely on the material's color, as background colors come up.
Toady would you consider adding support in the RAWS for the next version for:
A) Allowing more things to be detested by dwarves including some form of a TAG for modders so that I could make dwarves potentially detest other creatures that aren't vermin or detest/dislike certain metals or even objects etc.
B) Allowing modders to somehow address the average amount of dislikes/likes of dwarves for each dwarf in a similar manner to the personality system? 10-50-100 (min, average, max)?
Next version? The tag would need support, like seeing the unit and disliking it, same goes for mats/items, and that would be more of a project. And yeah, the tag might not be the right way to go in the end, as it's too universal when it lives there.
The amount of dislike is similar as a project -- you'd want it to be used wherever it comes up, and there are quite a few places.
So does this mean they'll carry any number of stacks in a quiver, or any number of bolts, or will they need two separate quivers or carry practise bolts in their hand or what?
I'm not 100% sure yet, as I've not finished archery training yet, but the theory is to collect sufficient bolts in a single quiver for whatever purpose they currently have for them. Many of the obstacles I had getting them to do that before have gone away now.
Will we ever be able to see a dwarf's history from Dwarf Mode? I mean, a way to access Legends without having to abandon the fort would be nice. Also, can there be something so you can see what dwarf is assigned to a building task from the building itself instead of going into the unit/job menus?
This would be nice now, but it'll become more urgent once embark/migrant dwarves are drawn from site populations and can have interesting and meaningful histories. There's also the floatier questions of how much omniscience the player should have, etc.
--
That would be indeed be nice, especially on menus that have lots of unused room, like building construction screens that just say "Waiting for Architect."
Those are both good ideas but unlikely to get implemented for the next release, since Toady is probably as close as he'll ever be to a feature freeze.
I really don't know if you'll ever be able to punch up a dwarf's entire history. It seems probable now, at least as a world gen init thing, when you've got everything set to be revealed. If you don't, then you probably shouldn't be able to see it. I personally prefer keeping things hidden from an overall perspective, but it won't be carried practically until there's more anecdotal/legend information available during actual play.
It would be nice to see the working dwarf, but that might have to wait until after this release. The building task screen is archaic, and it's hard to create space for it without jamming it somewhere really ugly or doing a rewrite.
Toady, with the new material system, can bolts pass straight through flesh/similar and out the other side again? Possibly into another creature behind them?
I think if there is actual wounding/deflection, the bolt is considered stopped as a projectile object. On the other hand, it tracks the velocity more closely now, so feeding that back in probably wouldn't be a huge issue.
While you're doing the quartermaster and such, if I may be so bold, could we have a DF mode screenshot or two of the nifty new menus and such?
I can add it to the screenshot request list. I'm a little leery to do it when I'm still finishing stuff off because it is most subject to change at that time.
Since we now have the new Quartermaster semi-noble (barely even qualifies as a noble, unless they are also the bookkeeper), would it be possible to have them be in the military at the same time and still be able to do the job? I think the term is actually a Naval (or sailing rather) rank, but other sections of the military certainly have something similar. I know the mayor and other appointed nobles can be drafted, but I haven't tried making them do work while drafted but off duty.
They should work on whatever if they don't have any other orders, but if they are supposed to be equipped someplace, then it's not as practical since it's an office job like bookkeeping.
Does the Quartermaster decide who gets what, or does he just look after the equipment and toss out any old gear for the recruits?
The dwarf decides who gets what when the equipment designation is vague. If you assign a specific item to a soldier, the dwarf is skipped, though the dwarf is still in charge of collecting the lists of available items for that screen.
Do dwarves now properly figure out who to use two-handed weapons on their own? Or do we still need to specifically tell them to do so?
I'm not sure what you mean on this one. Was this something to do with modded weapons or the weapons left by siegers?
Will dorfs (eventually) be able to swap/trade/steal items off one another or from unattended storage? Or are owned/held items still hardcoded as 'taboo' for acquisition-job purposes?
Yeah, it's still the same there. It'll take some work to get that done right, so they don't follow each other around for ages with nothing happening. They need to shout at each other or something, so that the guy with the item stops.
Toady, Is the issue with wrestling that I just mentioned (the wrestled away items staying held) been fixed yet? Just out of curiosity.
Theoretically, yeah. We'll get a series of practical checks when I get to tests for the injury rate on sparring.
Have you determined the cause of the "dwarves run around naked" bug from the dev log 2 days ago?
Yeah, it wasn't sending an ownership notification to the function that dresses dwarves during embark (and the ownership was what ends up storing their initial civilian outfit), so they were like "What's this? I specifically remember wanting to dress in nothing today!" and pitched them on the ground as extra worn objects, after failing to find a clothing stockpile by the wagon.
In mythology there are often creatures who give birth to similar or random creatures (Greeks had the Mother of all monsters). What are your thoughts of (Semi)Megabeasts and powers who give birth or generate lesser creatures or even vermin?
I think it's all good -- the general idea here is to generate a creation myth for a given world, which might involve some or all of the pantheons that are eventually worshipped, and then each of the gods which exist, the mega beasts, powers, forces, intelligent critters and wilderness beasts will have more of a foundation to go ahead with their antics. In particular, some of them could appear before others, and they could get it on to make others, and that sort of thing. I remember creating some kind of list for Armok 1 that had ways that each of the groups could create, destroy or interact with each of the other groups (which leads to the fairly common alternate models like civilizations creating actual gods through worship and that sort of thing). I have no idea when we'll get to that sort of thing.
You seem to have a hard time putting your head around "Extinctified" Cultures judging by posts and Fortress talk. Did you think about it some more since the last talk?
-JIC: By Extinctified Cultures I am mostly refering to cultures that seem almost to exist only to die out before the end of World Generation usually to leave ruins.
He he, I guess I can't put my head around this question either. Was there something about extinct cultures that you were curious about?
Will the new titans take on a form that is connected to the habitat of their biome? I expect all kinds of wierdness with the Forgotten Ones and the aquatic ones are more or less predictable, so I'm talking about the surface titans. For example, a titan that rules over a large desert (which I tend to generate in my worlds) would take the form of something adapted to the desert, maybe reptillian, a titan that rules over the frozen arctic wastes and glaciers would take the form of something that is covered in dense fur or thick blubber, a titan of the swamps would be something amphibianish. I know the titans are suppoused to be like nature spirits and would reflect the biomes they inhabit/rule over. I am expecting multiple curveballs even with the surface titans, but they are still tied in to the environment.
I know there was that muck frog that walked out of a desert, but that was a demon, not a titan.
Oh yea, will we be seeing plant-based or plantlike titans? Having a massive shambling tree-like titan walk out of the jungle would be cool.
There's only the slightest hint of that now, if I remember. They get their region sent in to the randomizer, so it is available, but it isn't used much yet. Way back when, I wasn't sure if I was going to slip in sphere stuff for regions this time or not, and I still kind of want to wait for that before I get too heavy in the region dependence.
Are Dinosaurs going to have their modern day names or are you going to give them the names similar to Beak Dogs? (Even though I believe they are based off of the Movie version of V-Raptors which don't technically exist)
I didn't use particular dinosaurs, but rather the larger groups. And it is somewhat science-ass at this point. Like... "theropod" and stuff. I have no idea what the current familiarity level of dinosaur-obsessed children is these days, post-Jurassic movies and etc., so it could be that the terms I'm using are considered colloquial or something.
Beak dogs are based on Labyrinth and Tremors 2, he he he.
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Topic: Future of the Fortress: List of Remaining Items (Read 3710994 times)