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[Rift]

"...You may escape, only to find that you have succumbed to a terrible curse, unable to show your face again to the world of the living. It is your choice. Will you choose adventure?"

If it was a toady post i would assume that means cursing your adventurer is possible in the next release, but since its threetoe i'm unsure.

..i hope so.

[NW_Kohaku]

Is the old list of powergoals and stuff gone?  I was trying to find it to see if there was anything in the future to let you play a Megabeast (Properly, not just setting it up so they're playable in adventure mode.  Living in a cave, sleeping on a pile of gold, adventurers attacking, you get the idea) but it's not there anymore.

It's still there, there just aren't links to it anywhere but in the suggestions forum anymore.

http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_single.html

[scriver]

"...You may escape, only to find that you have succumbed to a terrible curse, unable to show your face again to the world of the living. It is your choice. Will you choose adventure?"

If it was a toady post i would assume that means cursing your adventurer is possible in the next release, but since its threetoe i'm unsure.

..i hope so.

Maybe not the a curse of the turn-into-nightcreature kind. But other kinds, like a curse draining the PC of life, making him weaker or other stuff like that I guess is feasible. Also, I guess, nightcreature-type curses where you loose control of the PC (and thus loose the game) might be possible as well, I think. I'm keeping myself optimisticly dreaming about it

[zwei]

Issue #3 can be solved using Dwarf Therapist - give everyone temporary custom professions or nicknames like "S1", "S2" and remove them after setting up the squads. While the list position defaulting every time you select a dwarf is a nuisance, in the case of migrants I can just scroll backwards to get them as they're coming in from the map.

When an action practically requires the use of a third party software, it is probably a good sign that the action is too hard to accomplish with in-game tools.

It isn't too hard, it can be done, but if the use of a third party makes it easier indeed there is room for improvement.

Indeed, it is no game-breaker, might be issue with specific playstyle, but it kind of adds to "want to play df? theese utilities are essential!" thingie.

Oh, blood smears and broken bolts everywhere? run dfcleanmap!
Oh, you want to dig only vein and not surrounding rocks? run dfvdig!
etc etc...

[LoSboccacc]

and there was Toady, hoping to limit derail in the development thread.

I'd post a roadkill image now but it would be of bad taste even for one like me.

[monk12]

I'm always surprised when I find out how much trouble people have with the military interface- I've found that the basic premises behind it were rather intuitive, and a little dedicated work irons out most of the quirks with the system. I've always had more trouble with farming and maintaining the clothing industry- I can never quite balance it right.

There are some fundamental issues:

1) Schedulle switches do not provide feedback. It takes some time for dwarves to snap out of their previous orders. It makes everything seem like it just does not work at all. I completelly expect squad that was just assigned to patroll duty to actually start patroling instead of chilling out for month or so.

2) Enter key deletes. Seriously, how come, that is like ... worst key posible for that task. This is especially annoying when you accidentally delete chest item from default Metal Armor as there is not way to re-add that one other than reseting uniform... and if you manage to delete that from uniform, well it is ctrl-alt-del time and continuing from latest backup.

3) Squad assigments forces you to pick for all the dwarves, including other squads. Cue massive confusion and accidentally canibalized older squads. Even worse, when you add dwarf, list scroll position resets and if you want to add another dwarf that was right next to him (typical for new immigrants), you have to scroll again. It is also painfully useless if you decide to draft everyone as emergency response - try doing that to 150 pop fort without going insane.

It's a case of different play styles finding some issues to be irrelevant while others are glaringly huge. Issue #1 is a non-factor for me as I prefer to micromanage from the squads-screen instead of setting up patrol routes or defend burrows. Issue #2 is even less relevant because I prefer making all my equipment myself and I want a guarantee my soldiers equip specific armour types of specific materials which I know I've made. Issue #3 can be solved using Dwarf Therapist - give everyone temporary custom professions or nicknames like "S1", "S2" and remove them after setting up the squads. While the list position defaulting every time you select a dwarf is a nuisance, in the case of migrants I can just scroll backwards to get them as they're coming in from the map.

Well, that's this player's way of playing that doesn't get grossly bothered by these and other Issues with the game. Toady's task is to try and accommodate everyone's playstyles. The dev cycle currently does not have a "provide feedback for improvements, not just bugfixes". Toady moves on when he deems a set of features to be playable to certain styles, not every style.

Issue 1 doesn't seem to bother me so much, perhaps because I already feel like  I wait a good deal of time for dwarves to go do their jobs. If I have some mining designated and I make a random dwarf a miner, I hardly ever see him go straight there as soon as I tell him to. Then again, the infrequent occasions I use patrol routes I haven't noticed the kind of month-long delays you seem to be experiencing.

Issue 2 is again par for the course for me, and I regularly change some key bindings because I don't like the defaults. That said, enter to add/remove was pretty intuitive for me, once I grasped the general flow of the screen- add things from the list at the far right, remove things from the left. I've never noticed the lack of "metal chest" largely because I always delete it in favor of a more specific "metal mail shirt" and "metal breastplate" assignment, to make sure my dwarves layer properly.

Issue 3 is actually not an issue- when you scroll over a dwarf when choosing where to assign him it lists his squad affiliation, if any, in the upper right. I've always found it quite useful when I need to consolidate 3 squads into one because my military was decimated by a goblin siege. When immigrants arrive, they are always at the bottom of the list in the order they arrived- since I typically evaluate migrants for military suitability as soon as they arrive, I don't typically have troubles filling in my squads. I'll grant you it can be tricky looking for replacements later since there is no way (outside of Dwarf The Rapist) to organize dwarves by a particular skill (as opposed to profession,) but that problem is not unique to the military screen. As far as drafting your entire fortress goes, yeah, that's a pain in the butt, but if you're at that point its because other mistakes have been made previously- DF is a game about preparation and planning, not reaction.

Like Psieye said, how big an issue is depends on your playstyle and experience, and is different for everyone. If there was a big problem with, say, mechanics, I'd never know about it because I never do anything more advanced than a pump stack.

[Knight Otu]

Issue 3 is actually not an issue- when you scroll over a dwarf when choosing where to assign him it lists his squad affiliation, if any, in the upper right.

It's pretty easy to miss, though, if you don't know to look for it. I'd say that ideally those soldiers should be color-coded in a way similar to people in the room assignment menus in addition to whatever military screen improvements there are.

[Urist McDepravity]

Never used DT and used dfhack only for some bizzare experiments. I find military to be quite stable in recent releases, and even healthcare is almost fine now. Saying its "broken" is definitely intentional exaggeration, on the border of trolling.
For me there are two problems with dwarf mode: lag and boredom. Its too slow for ambitious projects and neither challenging nor having any objective for regular play. So new features (esp. proper sieges, which could actually challenge my defenses) are vital for making it interesting again. Improved body systems or fighting simulation? Not so much. Most of the time I don't care about such little details. If siegers cannot overcome my defensive installations, it does not matter how exactly they die.
Yes, alligator is weaker than cow. Does that affect my gameplay? Not at all. When I throw legendary axedwarfs at that alligator, it dies from first strike anyway.

[monk12]

Oh ho ho, new devlog update! Necromancer fights sound more FUN every time we get one!

[darkflagrance]

There will probably be tags on limbs like arms, like a CAN_ANIMATE_SEPARATELY similar to how limbs already have tags like LEFT and FLIER in the raws, that determines whether they raise by themselves.

[G-Flex]

There will probably be tags on limbs like arms, like a CAN_ANIMATE_SEPARATELY similar to how limbs already have tags like LEFT and FLIER in the raws, that determines whether they raise by themselves.

This shouldn't be necessary; the game should be able to check to see if a severed part has a [GRASP] or [STANCE] part connected to it. At least I don't THINK that would cause problems.

[darkflagrance]

It might be useful in case players don't want snakeman tails animating or something like that.

[PTTG??]

There will probably be tags on limbs like arms, like a CAN_ANIMATE_SEPARATELY similar to how limbs already have tags like LEFT and FLIER in the raws, that determines whether they raise by themselves.

That or [DONT_ANIMATE] would be ideal.

[Dante]

It seems a little clumsy to have to tag each bodypart as raisable or not; especially given the fact that curses are customisable, so you'd need to give a tag for each part for each curse. Even given templates, this would be annoying.

I'd imagine that, as somebody pointed out, anything that is a Ngoso Smomstra's Left Arm or similarly named bodypart will be a candidate [as opposed to reaction products and food items]. Or since there would be problems with undead back left teeth and so on, I suppose there could be a requirement that the severed part is above a certain percentage of the original body.

I'd say a [DO_NOT_ANIMATE] might be better for modders at least, yeah. Or more likely, [DO_NOT_APPLY_CURSE:CURSE_NAME].

[Mel_Vixen]

  hehe this is some awesome stuff. Now let the bodyparts reattach themself to the bodys to make it really terrifying.