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[flabort]

This is a silver mace. it is orbitted by electrum balls, menacing with spikes of obsidian. it is addorned with hanging rings of lead. there are strands of giant cave spider silk woven between the lead rings. it menaces with spikes of lead, raddiating with heat. rings of light encircle the object. the object chills the air around it. on the object is an image of a dwarf and a whip. the dwarf is holding up the whip. the image seems to move. a cat leather whip menacing with spikes of emerald is joined to the object with giant cave spider silk. a towercap barrel with dwarven wine is joined to the object with silver.

OK, dwarves, humans, and goblins, we have here a magical artifact. it's name and value are unimportant, but it has some details we have not had before, and will not have for a while.

Orbiting balls:
lumps of matierial, spinning around the object in a magical way. (these happen to be electrum)

Decorations on decorations:
spikes, strands, imagaes, and other things, on/between/around other decorations.
(this has spikes of obsidian on the obiting balls, and spider silk strands woven between hanging rings)

Temprature:
heat or cold radiating from the artifact, or from decorations.
(heat from lead spikes, cold from the artifact)

moving images:
magical animation.

rings of energy:
wether light, darkness, fire, or electricity, energy can be woven around the object with magic.

objects of another nature:
other objects can be attached to the artifact using another matteirial, like a bucket to a crossbow, an axe to a pickaxe, or in the case of our example, a whip and a barrel to a mace. objects attached this way may be decorated, or have stuff in them. artifacts containing reffillable objects may be used as a container, but this will be the hardest part to program.


any more decorations and FANTASY artifacts using them, weather magical or not, may be posted. most of these though, will probably have to wait for magic.

(P.S. the artifact's name would be towerkill the rim of fish, and is worth 378100 dwarf bucks)

[Mikademus]

moving images:
magical animation.

Urist: Hey, McDofus, check out my new artefact!
McDofus: Hey dude, cool, you got an iArtefact?

[Pilsu]

Too flashy for my tastes. I like magic subtle, no burning swords or death lasers

[Tormy]

What's the problem with burning swords? This is a fantasy game afterall, isn't it?

[Neonivek]

Especially given that Artifacts are truely rare and not all of them are weapons. (and yes I am adjusting for the fact artifacts will end up possible outside your fortresses)

Will it destroy the game to have MAYBE 1 or 2 flaming swords per world?

[Mel_Vixen]

If there are any, cause toady made the following an longterm Arc:

WORLD GENERATION PARAMETERS: Allow some degree of control over the world and the more sweeping aspects of play. Possibilities include control over terrain, magic, religions, random vs. stock creatures, fantasy vs. a more 'historical' (ie human) feeling. Ideally, the variability would allow you to move between standard fantasy, fairy tales, mythic fantasy and gothic fantasy, for example.

So if you dont want artfacts just set the magic low.

I hate that argument that to much "fantasie" makes DF unplayable. The amount of fantasie in an DF world will (hopefully) be custizeable so nobody has to deal with flaming swords or the Master ring if he/she doesnt want to.

[Neonivek]

The Artifact arc is sooner and has its own brand of magic (if you check the corresponding Devs)... It is a version 1 addition.

So even with Magic low... you will get magic artifacts... just not magic artifacts built with the magic system.

I mean, why complain that flaming swords are too magical in a world with... well... Flaming people? I think I would more readily accept a flaming sword as reality then a man made entirely of Ice.

[Tormy]

Yeah Neon, well said...also the Artifact Arc is all about magical artifacts. So -for example- swords with magical powers [flaming, freezing, lifeleeching side effects etc.] should be absolutely "valid" in the game.

[flabort]

true, the more magical artifacts would be rarer than non-magical ones. even decorations with magic would be rather rare.

by the way, if decorations ever ARE moved to the raws... any decorations derived from discussing here will be able to be modded in by hand... or most of them.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I see a decoration raw like this:

Code: [Select]

[DECORATION:SPIKES]
[NAME:spike:spikes]
[PHRASE:mennaces with spikes of <MATIERIAL>]
[WOOD]
[STONE]
[METAL]
[WEAPON:DAMAGE:1:2:PIERCE]
[FREQUENCY:30:60:75]
[SUPPORTS:ORBS:AURA]
or...
[DECORATION:ORBS]
[NAME:orbiting balls]
[PHRASE:is orbited by <MATIERIAL> balls]
[WOOD]
[STONE]
[METAL]
[MAGICAL]
[FREQUENCY:10:20:40]
[SUPPORTS:SPIKES:IMAGES:AURA:STUDS:STRANDS]
labelling matierial types will prevent spikes of fabric, or strands of wood woven inside rings, from appearing and confusing the @$%# out of us.

but until toady gets us to v1 or something, I doubt decorations, weather artifact quality or not, will get into the raws.

Especially given that Artifacts are truely rare and not all of them are weapons. (and yes I am adjusting for the fact artifacts will end up possible outside your fortresses)

Will it destroy the game to have MAYBE 1 or 2 flaming swords per world?

true, true, artifacts ARE rare. and not all of them are weapons again. i've gotten a bed, made of dead dragon bones. so a bucket that freezes or heats the water inside would be possible with just the aura of a specific temprature added to the possible decorations.

but i doubt flaming swords will be even THAT common. more like 1 or 2 worlds per flaming sword, what with all the other possiblilities.

(just imagine what could be possible with using companion to increase the number of matierials)

[Felblood]

How careful are we going to have to be that we don't put on a red hot suit of platemail?

Worse yet, combine that with more specific armors: In 217 the Crazy Treaty went to war with the Fey Elves, over FleshSearings, a red hot, steel codpiece.

[irmo]

If there are any, cause toady made the following an longterm Arc:

WORLD GENERATION PARAMETERS: Allow some degree of control over the world and the more sweeping aspects of play. Possibilities include control over terrain, magic, religions, random vs. stock creatures, fantasy vs. a more 'historical' (ie human) feeling. Ideally, the variability would allow you to move between standard fantasy, fairy tales, mythic fantasy and gothic fantasy, for example.

So if you dont want artfacts just set the magic low.

I hate that argument that to much "fantasie" makes DF unplayable. The amount of fantasie in an DF world will (hopefully) be custizeable so nobody has to deal with flaming swords or the Master ring if he/she doesnt want to.

How about DF being unplayable because Toady doesn't have time to test and balance it on "low magic", and then test and balance it again on "high magic" without breaking "low magic"?

[Felblood]

Meh.

It'll get ironed out eventually.

That's the beauty of DF. Where any other developer would say, "Good enough." and move on to another project, Toady is committed to making DF as good as it can be.

Most developers would have considered the 2d version 1.0, but by not bestowing that title to any of these fine releases, Toady has made a powerful statement about his design philosophy. There's going to be bumps along the road, but it'll get there.

[flabort]

How careful are we going to have to be that we don't put on a red hot suit of platemail?

Very .

but not all artifacts will make things hot or even cold. and tempratures might not even be that much. it could be a simple "warm" suit. it COULD be hot enough to kill anyone near it, but if it is, just forbid it.

in every 20 artifacts, i'd say 6 of them affect the temprature, half of which are hot, leaving 3 of 20 hot and 3 of 20 cold. i'd then say about a quarter of those are too hot to touch, so 3/4 of 20, or 3 of 80 are painfull to hold. about a third of those could kill, so maybe 1 of 80 artifacts could kill a dwarf of heat.

p.s. more spoilered potential decoration raws:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Code: [Select]

[DECCORATION:AURA]
[NAME:aura]
[CASTE:HOT:50]
[TEMPRATURE:1:40:90]
[PHRASE:raddiating with heat]
[CASTE:COLD:50]
[TEMPRATURE:-1:-40:-90]
[PHRASE:chills the air around it]
[CASTESELECTALL]
[MAGICAL]
[NOMATIERIAL]
[FREQUENCY:30:35:50]


[Neonivek]

Well there are no such thing as "Non-magical" artifacts as far as the definition we are using for Magic goes.

I mean as artifacts stand currently they have a quality that goes well beyond the physical bounds of meer mortals and are indestructable. They are either magical or "Epic"

But I do agree that there very well will be low key artifacts without any sort of ability or traits that jump out at you visually or effectually.

[Tormy]

true, the more magical artifacts would be rarer than non-magical ones. even decorations with magic would be rather rare.

My opinion is, that everything should be changeable in the RAWs, IE: We should be able to specify the number of min. and max. number of low/med/high quality magical artifacts / generated worlds for example.