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Author Topic: Future of the Fortress  (Read 1197048 times)

Neoskel

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #1950 on: August 22, 2011, 02:17:12 pm »

Hmm,

Do butchered skulls animate? Or do those count as 'skeletal heads' already?
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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #1951 on: August 22, 2011, 03:49:25 pm »

The hollow skin reminds me of Aztec priests flaying victims' skins and using them as clothing. It's not hard to get to a hollow skin zombie from that. (Actually, there was a Hecatomb card along those lines, the "Forsaken Shell"...)
Which is apparently from another game of Wizards that's slightly more successful (and which in turn certainly has other sources, and so on). It's a very cool feature still, though.

Can reanimated dragons breathe fire, and reanimated imps throw fireballs?
Do material properties on skin carry over properly, so an animated imp skin is magma/fire immune?
If material properties do carry over, would it be reasonable to assume that if a creature has metal skin, then the skin that's animated will also be the same metal with all those same properties?
In all likelihood, material properties do carry over. That kind of consistency is what material definitions should help with. Actually, they kind of have to carry over, along with wounds etc.

Hmm,

Do butchered skulls animate? Or do those count as 'skeletal heads' already?
They should animate. They're a head body part of a once-living creature, as you note. Unless the totem stuff wreaks havoc with that.

Though the butchery parts have me wondering how it works with butchered severs, and the fact that you get skin from each body part... can we get animated skin from arms while the skin of the feet remains unanimated? Do feathers or hair of a creature animate if they cover the appropriate body parts, or does the tissue have to be a layer type?
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Mel_Vixen

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #1952 on: August 22, 2011, 04:10:28 pm »

 8) i hope the hairs scales and spines get animated along with the skin. I can see easely a animated hedgehog-men husk driving his spines into your body.


Poisons that make skin rot suddenly became more valueable.
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Matz05

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #1953 on: August 22, 2011, 11:10:59 pm »

Yeah, but they mean independantly. Just because they are a tissue of the head, doesn't mean that hedgehogman scalps should animate and become crawling caltrops.

Actually, that would be rather cool...
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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #1954 on: August 23, 2011, 02:12:48 am »

I just want to note here, the necromancers can animate undead beings made solely of the skin of a dead being. Sure, that sounds silly at first glance, but consider... You're walking through a narrow trail in the underbrush of an evil forest in the dark of the night. You hear a rythmic sound, coming closer. You can't imagine what could make the noise- something like a mass of wet leather being beaten against the ground. It's getting closer... closer...

And suddenly, you turn around to see... a strange sight. It appears to be a human, but melted, flesh hanging in loose coils, bulging and flowing unnaturally. Its eyes are closed, and its mouth, and the limbs hang limply, every joint appearing to be dislocated... but the strangest thing of all is the glow... under the deflated crown of the head, a glow, and in the chest a fire, amber-red through the thin flesh.

The arms swing up, elbows bending backwards with nauseating fluidity. Just like its footsteps, every motion is punctuated by squelches and slaps as the still-wet skin flaps and slides. The mouth opens, and the glow streams out, yellow light from the toothless, tongueless maw.

The eyes open. There are no eyes.
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G-Flex

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #1955 on: August 23, 2011, 05:05:45 pm »

8) i hope the hairs scales and spines get animated along with the skin. I can see easely a animated hedgehog-men husk driving his spines into your body.

Doubt it. Hair comes off separately when butchering is done, and I'm pretty sure the skin object is only skin and nothing else.
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Organum

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #1956 on: August 23, 2011, 05:06:05 pm »

It's funny how one simple thing can add a whole new flavor of nightmare fuel.
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Karakzon

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #1957 on: August 23, 2011, 05:08:19 pm »

least its better than fighting the skelitons. skins easy if youve got a blade of some kind. though i feel sorry for the guy with the warhammer, hes not gonna be much good wihtout bones to break.

Unless of course you tie loose strands of cut up fresh skin round a war hammer and use it as a strangulation/holding device when you reanimate the skin?
the possabilitys are endless ^^
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Untelligent

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #1958 on: August 23, 2011, 09:22:12 pm »

It's funny how one simple thing can add a whole new flavor of nightmare fuel.

It's funnier how from the way Toady worded it the fact that they exist at all was a complete accident.
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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #1959 on: August 23, 2011, 09:27:05 pm »

I like the hollow skin idea, but with one question: Presumably, the animated "skin" is in the shape of the creature, as if the creature had been hollowed out. I'm wondering what kind of weird butchering processes dwarves have that leave the entire hide intact! Maybe they extract the innards by boring a hole in the top and pureeing the insides? I don't want to think about it.
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Dsarker

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #1960 on: August 23, 2011, 11:16:24 pm »

The impression I got was that it was 'stitched' together, whether by magic or by hand.
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Cruxador

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #1961 on: August 24, 2011, 12:51:53 am »

I like the hollow skin idea, but with one question: Presumably, the animated "skin" is in the shape of the creature, as if the creature had been hollowed out. I'm wondering what kind of weird butchering processes dwarves have that leave the entire hide intact! Maybe they extract the innards by boring a hole in the top and pureeing the insides? I don't want to think about it.
They just pull it all out through the mouth.
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eux0r

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #1962 on: August 24, 2011, 04:56:47 am »

well, all i ever did in that direction was butchering a bunny, but there you actually peel of the skin in one piece(you start at the legs and then pull it all off in one go), nearly completely intact. i guess its safe to assume this is how its done with pretty much everything, and some minor cuts and missing bits arent that important, i guess. but hair should only be separated on shearable creatures, so bunny-skins retain their hair? same should go for spines and stuff on other smaller creatures?
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Toady One

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #1963 on: August 24, 2011, 09:29:25 am »

Quote from: GamerLord
Will we ever get objects/items that can do certain attacks, like strangling. (E.g. Will we one day be able to garrote someone with his best friends guts, or whip him with them? And will we be able to build in Adventurer Mode anytime in the foreseeable future?

Item attacks like that were languishing on the old dev pages for a while (and in particular various things with the guts), but it hasn't happened yet.  There are various adv mode building things on the current dev pages.  I don't have a timeline for any of it.

Quote from: KennySheep
Will players in fortress mode ever be able to bring curses upon their dwarves by building a temple to one of the gods, then profaning it themselves by taking out the alter to put in a refuse stockpile or something? Will we even be able to build temples in fortress mode?

It's more likely that some temple furnishing or another will be toppled in a tantrum, probably, but yeah, I think it'll all fit together when we get there.  The dwarves currently have deities they worship, so you'll get something tangible to mess with eventually to make that come to life in the fortress.

Quote from: piecewise
1. On of the things that always kinda annoys me with Adventure mode is that you can never really tell what someone is wearing. You have to dig through their inventory menu and then mentally piece what they look like together. Is it possible that, in the future, when you select someone and press "d" to look at their description, it could say not only what they look like physically but also what they're wearing? It could just say whatever they're wearing in the "top" layer of each body part and say nothing if they're not wearing anything. something like "He has a [whatever] on his upper body, [another whatever] on the his lower body, [yet another whatever] on his left hand, etc."

2.Another problem I tend to have in adventure mode, in mods especially, is knowing what skill a specific weapon uses. Would it be possible to have some way of finding out what skill a weapon uses in game (without checking raws or using it to see what skill increases)?

3.Right now, injury in adventure mode is kinda...sporadic in its effects. I managed to shatter the bones of the upper and lower legs and upper and lower arms of some merchant and he continued to attack seemingly unabated and without any real negative effects. Similarly, damaging organs seems to be completely ineffective except in the case of heart, lungs and brain (and spine, if you consider that an organ). Tendons also don't seem to effect much, if anything, from what I've seen. Is this sort of thing more of a side effect of a personality strangeness (ie "all my limbs are shattered but I'll still cut the eyes out of that guy who stole a spoon because the hivemind desires it") or just that body structures and actual physical actions don't quite correlate yet?

1. Is the difference picking out the top-most or the most prominent objects?  The paragraph would be even more cumbersome if it listed everything that is already in the inventory list.  It probably shouldn't reveal their entire inventory anyway, I suppose.

2. Yeah, that's reasonable.  I don't know when I'll get to it.  Item descriptions in general are entirely deficient.

3. The injury effects aren't fully realized yet.  What you've seen could have had something to do with personality/atts on occasion, but it's mostly just stuff not being done.

Quote from: Dae
Ah, apparently Toady is on to adding criminals. How deep will criminals be implemented for this time ? Random formation, ot will it be tied to for example poverty ? Does this means Stalkers will get in too ?

It might see a bit more work when we do the stalkers, but I don't think it can be all that interesting until we do a little more legwork on individual property as well as the personality rewrite -- and the entire crime/punishment dev role for adv mode and whatever effects that has on dwarf mode.  If there's a feeling that crime happens and is punished in appropriate ethic civs during world gen, with the rare supernatural happening, that'll be good for now.

Quote from: Caldfir
Which situations in adventure/dwarf mode are (currently) pulling from real populations, and which ones are just spawning random creatures of the associated type of the given civ?  Meaning that they are either a historical figure, or they represent some actual member of the parent civ's actual current population of creatures.

We already know that random spawns are:

    starting 7 (dwarf mode)
    immigrants (dwarf mode)
    invaders (dwarf mode)
    traders (dwarf mode)
    guards (dwarf mode)

And that real population pulls are:

    diplomats (dwarf mode)
    cities

Ones that are potentially up in the air are:

    castle guards (adventure mode)
    bandits  (adventure mode)

The castle guards and non-leader bandits come from the nebulous entity populations, rather than historical figures.  These are numbered groups, however the individual details are generated on the fly.  But they do come from a finite pool.  Just to clarify (I assume this is known), invader leaders can be historical (and all the megabeasts are historical).  Once breeding is in (Release 5 currently, I think), getting rid of all from-thin-air generation will be a high priority, since the systems can't begin to be tuned without that.  I suppose that'll unleash a (hopefully brief version-wise) period of absolute chaos and world death after play.

Quote from: Dareon Clearwater
With thieves down in the sewers, is there any consideration being given to literally underground black markets?

I have a feeling things like that are going to wait for the player-as-criminal stuff to be worked on with vigor, and it arises naturally there to give you something to do with ill-gotten gains.  Depending on how trade agreements work out, smuggling could happen sooner I suppose.

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Quote from: Jiri Petru
How are prices determined?

I mean in the new economy, of course.

EDIT: Or is there no new economy yet? I might have lost track of it.
Quote from: Roflcopter
At what level of abstraction will the relative value adjustments of trade goods applied?

IE: Is the supply/demand of goods handled by settlement, by individual merchant, by general region, etc.

It's only napkin-calc'ing stuff in world gen, based on the demand from regions comprising a market and its local villages.  I haven't embarked on the in-play numbers yet, and it'll need to have happened by the time (or during the time) that caravans/merchants start moving in play.  That's currently at Release 4, but the basic calculations will quite probably be attempted sooner, by the time you are doing stuff in taverns in both modes, especially if you are able to do things like set prices at the dwarven tavern, where we'll want that to fit into something more final in the rest of the world.  I expect it will be a very bumpy ride overall, getting it to work at all legitimately, with various intractible situations arising, but we should be able to bluster through with a hammer if things go terribly wrong.

Quote from: Roflcopter
Will the caravan arc include changes that allow fortress mode players to dispatch their own trade caravans to certain regions?

And as a sub question, if so this would set precedent for persistent entities leaving your fort and doing things that effect the world, which would be pretty necessary for the army arc, so would I be correct in assuming that if this is the case, it would get thrown in somewhere around the end of the caravan development arc?

I think eventually we'll get there, and as you say there are going to be relevant things going on around that time.  I'm not sure how it's going to play out though.  There will be lots of additions and alterations to how trading on-site works earlier on.

Quote from: Neonivek
Toady now that gods are real (somewhat), how exactly can anyone even pretend to be one? How do they stop the ire of the gods? What are your thoughts on this?

Many real-world religions have people surrounding them that claim this or that, and they aren't struck down in obvious fashion for whatever reason, so far as I can tell.  It'll continue to be that way until there are ways for the gods to care, and then they may or may not care, depending on whatever.  I think they should be able to act, though, sometimes, although they might not always do it directly since that seems to be the way things go (it might be preferable if the fortress or adventurer the player is acting with are involved if they worship the god, for example, though I'm sure it'll mostly be left to chance).  A system where the gods can just act directly on everybody that slights them is possible, but it would probably lead quickly to a very uniform world depending on how many things the gods care about (assuming the world's gods have the kind of direct powers necessary to stop a demon from swiping a throne, for example).

Quote from: thvaz
The dungeons denizens like bandits, beasts and animal peoples will make incursions into the surface to attack or steal? These attacks will be restricted only for the city they live under?

Nothing intentional happens during play, in the same way there are no raids by the bandits from their outdoor camps or the night creatures from lairs.  The addition of these things will probably happen around the same time, as the first bonafide army arc step.  In world gen things happen as usual.  I don't think it restricts the location, but they restrict targets spatially and by pop to some extent overall so the city they live in will be targeted more often that way.

Quote from: eux0r
-since gods seem to get fleshed out more and more, are you also planning to introduce something along the lines of angels?
-if yes: would those exist for every god or would that be more a "gods preference", so one god has his own and another doesnt or do you have other plans, like maybe there is just some kind of angel army that follows the orders of all the gods?
-related: do you plan any hierarchy between demons?
-if yes: would something like a demon-king emerge naturally through power struggles or would it be something with a certain demon(demon-race) to be predestined to be the king(higher demons)?
(-will there be something like demon-races at all?)

Yeah, we've considered it a bit.  We started with night creatures, and we have a fairy/general otherworldly color scheme as well.  From there it was rethinking the &s as well as the gods and critters associated to gods, where they live and how they interact with the main world and others, but we don't have details on these last two groups, and how they and general otherworldly fairy critters might overlap.  When we handle the afterlife stuff we mentioned in Zach's last story, I think it'll all come into play rapidly.  Certainly there's no reason every god will have every (or any) category of critters wherever they reside (if anywhere), but it could also be that every category of critter comes into play for a single god, and I suppose there are plenty of examples of entire pantheons with critters associated to the pantheon rather than one god or another, as you mentioned.  Issues like hierarchy are also going to be generated with the world -- I suppose it can just be handled with an entity and its positions as usual.  We've thought about how it'll work in general terms, much along the lines of the question themselves, but just in the manner of musing rather than coming up with definite priorities.

Quote from: Dwarfu
Will world gen "heros" ever assume the role of treasure hunter and go after these items, or will they just be looking for kills?

Probably when we go for the treasure hunter role stuff on the dev page, but perhaps before, just to get artifacts flowing around a bit.  The movement of artifacts should be one of the main potential driving forces of events.  It would be fun to develop a rivalry and to hunt them down once we've got tracking and interrogation, if it comes to that.

Quote from: magmaholic
Are we going to have ghost towns/ruins?

There are ruins with ruined buildings at times now, though they tend to resettle the old sites if they can.  Many towns can be in a bust state at this point, in which case a lot of the buildings are in bad shape if they aren't occupied.

Quote from: Heph
Will we be able to see other adventurers in the sewers fighting for theyr lives/looting stuff?
Will the maps have say some small markers for important people/the places where important people hang out normaly?
Can a (nonplayer) adventurer be tasked to kill a werebeast if he did himself the killings (thus if he is said werebeast)?

If it keeps bugging out and placing people down there you will, he he he, but moving critters are for later.

I haven't sorted out how the map is going to be used for navigation.  It has to be usable and not entirely cluttered, so that you can still see the road network.  The way things are, I think it should be possible, since there are so few buildings that fall out of the "shop" or "home" category.

Although it would be ideal to be tasked to hunt yourself down, it isn't currently possible (unless there's a bug).  I imagine when we do the crime rewrite, where crime is separated from historical figures at the outset, that that sort of thing would happen more automatically, where you'd be looking for information and so on related to a crime, without it just giving you the target critter (e.g. all the interrogation stuff on the dev page).  It would be interesting to investigate the murders you've been committing, especially if you aren't sure you are doing them.  Having the player not know would be a bit easier if it happened while you are sleeping, but that isn't something that'll always be true.  In general, sometimes the werewolf is aware, sometimes they wake up all bloody, so they know something's wrong, and sometimes they have no idea anything happened until they hear about it from somebody else.

Quote from: Neonivek
Toady right now the world only wobbles it mostly stays in place with very little actually affecting the balance as a whole, especially since by the very fabric of a game no one can really make large strides, but nothing really shifts, changes, rises, falls, put at risk, or really created even with everything your putting in now. What do you think needs to be in place before that kind of narrative can occur?

I guess I am not being fair.

Nah, it's a fair question by itself, but you might be referring to a thread of discussion from before, where there was some bitterness.  I don't really understand why, because a large portion of the dev stuff has always been directed right at this, but I guess it just hasn't come fast enough and the sidetracks are wearing on patience here and there.  On the dev page now, Release 5 is the key to these ends, leading into sustaining populations for the army arc, with the resource movement provided by the caravan arc as an important foundation.  Once you have people being born, dying, and reorganizing the difference, it should be good enough to say something is happening, and then we can continue on from there.

Quote from: Putnam
Will there be some sort of tag to have vampires under a different name on a per-creature/caste basis? E.G, [CASTE_VAMPIRE_NAME:rainbow drinker:rainbow drinkers]

The existence of vampire-style creatures is hard-coded, but the particular kinds are not, so this wouldn't really be possible as things are.  A vampire mod could set restrictions on targets and have a series of effects/syndromes as it stands, for each creature type, but there isn't an isolated naming tag.

Quote from: thvaz
Will raised undead have the clothes, equipments and weapons they had when they died? Or will they be naked?

The way it currently works I would think they would be naked, but it would be nice to have them using the equipment they had when they died.

The corpse-as-container is a little messy for dwarf mode, since you want to get those items back into circulation and they'd be one step removed from all the current code that addresses ground objects.  Because there are bag/bins/etc., and dwarves dip into them regularly, I don't think it is an impossible change, but I'm pretty sure lots of things would break if I just went ahead with it, so I've avoided it this time around to prevent further delays.  It has been on my mind and is really necessary for them to work well, and for the game to make sense.  I'm not sure when it's going to happen.  It has been a desired feature for a long time, and the zombie animation makes it moreso.  It's kind of like the move/attack speed split.  Necessary, with a sort of nebulous fix-up time that constantly sees it pushed off for years.

Quote from: slyeye
Are there any considerations to add proper portcullis' to the game with the inclusion of vast walled cities or will this be regulated to the future moving fortress parts update?

I don't have anything for this time.  It doesn't need to be much different from the vertical bars attached to a lever at first, but I suppose making floodgates or any of these other buildings work requires the part of moving fortresses that allows buildings to change their occupancy through multiple z levels.

Quote from: Dae
I just noticed something with the maps. Along the northern part of the city, you can see roads ending straight into the city walls. That's not dramatic, after all there might be houses or farms there. What strikes me more is the road going through the northern gate which literally leads to nowhere. It ends at the gate. Could you please explain this Toady ?

Ah, that was a bug, if I'm looking at the same picture.  Roads that legitimately are dead-ends get that circle picture, and the one you are talking about is a line that just stops -- it just wasn't forming the south connection properly in the square above, and that has been fixed.

Quote
Quote from: EnigmaticHat
When hilldwarves are in, is there a chance we could end up with a town map like the one you posted, but with our own fortress at the center?
Quote from: Knight Otu
Seems unlikely - the hill dwarf settlements probably will use different structures from human towns. Perhaps if you mod the game to have dwarves use towns rather than mountain halls.
Quote from: Cruxador
It won't be identical, since the different races (humans, elves dwarves, etc.) are getting unique stuff in army arc. But I'd imagine that's the general idea.

Yeah, it's definitely going to be some analagous setup, with some dwarfification.  Hopefully all of the army stuff and hilldwarf/extending settlement management and road management and trade and whatever else will see those maps and the scale one higher come up in some uniform and combined way.

Quote from: hermes
I was wondering if this comment, "I'm in the middle of rewriting the army code to support the new zoomed-in maps (your traveling group is stored as an army for homogeneity's sake)." could be taken to imply that the future Worldgen battle report maps might use the same/a similar map system?  (i.e. same scale, representation of roads/rivers etc.)

Yeah, that's the idea for wars in general.  I usually bring up things like those maps from the American Civil War documentary.  Lots of bars and arrows and things, and to see little generated ones for the world gen fights has been a little pet thing of mine forever.  It was almost added during one of the releases a bit ago, but I'm glad (and lucky) I held off now because the new maps will come up during site attacks.  It should be fun when it happens.

Quote from: Areyar
How does the building list work, you select one and it shows you the icon(or *) on the citytravel map?
Or does it list only a handfull of local buildings of interest?

It's not yet a navigation system.  That's just everything that's in the square you are in.  Navigation is later, either this time or after depending on how necessary it seems as we play through in testing.

Quote from: Jiri Petru
Toady, what are double braids? (Google Image would help)

I had imagined it as two separate braids, but DG posted an image of the technical double braid, which seems to be one braid with strands in pairs (or whatever, you'll have to look, he he he).  I think it's best to use proper terms when they exist, and to the extent that there is a more-or-less universal set of words, I'd like to go with that eventually.  So it should probably be "arranged in a pair of braids" or something, but there could be a word for that too, maybe.  In a heavily decorated beardy culture that likes to name things.

Quote from: Cruxador
A couple questions that arose from rereading the dev page:
Will we get population sprawl with farms and whatnot growing up around adventurer-created sites?
I feel like that should happen based on the adventurer's reputation and what stuff the site actually includes.
Will merchants come to adventurer sites?
It would be a good reward that makes sense for building a nice site, both traveling caravans like in Dwarf mode and potentially markets formed by the population.

They aren't going to be any different from other sites, technically speaking.  It'll require the fluxuation of sprawl post-world-gen, unless it's handled as a special case first, but, yeah, your site is a site.  We haven't discussed specifically about you being able to establish places like markets, but there's no reason it wouldn't make sense for them to arise or be created, assuming you have a place the trade AI would see a reason to travel to once caravans can move around.  There's also the matter of very local traders like peddlars that wouldn't even require markets to operate, and you might see those almost automatically once they go in, since you'd almost certainly have a resource pool and a population from the outset.

Quote from: Dradym
any chance a fully customizable dwarf description is in the works? basically for adventure mode, but maybe for special dwarfs in dwarf mode? it would be nice to model a dwarf after my looks and/or personality, or others that "sponsor" a dwarf in my fortress.

It's not in the works, but I think we need to do it, just because it'd be funny to have a low-budget text analog to those game features where you construct a 3D character in detail with all the sliders.  I don't mind people being able to tweak their starting dwarves as a scenario setting perhaps.  There should be care not to make it routine to remove all imperfections, though, so it should be something you kind of commit to at the outset overall I guess.  Being able to alter dwarves that are in play is a little strange, especially because personalities and some physical traits have game effects, but for community games it could be an optional setting for your embark setup as with the starting dwarves, explicitly established at the outset.

Quote from: monk12
If you sever your arm and reanimate it, and then you die, will your arm continue to have adventures?

Well, to the extent that any of the NPCs do -- they don't really, unless you ask them to join you in the next game.  Your arm wouldn't be able to talk, so you wouldn't be able to recruit it.  If you were fighting with another civ, that civ might send you on a quest to kill your last adventurer's arm though, if that code is all still working.  Once we've got people moving around post-world-gen, your arm would have more of a chance, but without a soul, it might not have a rich inner life, and so not really have goals or do anything but defend its patch of dirt.  If at some point the animation mechanic is more of a possession-by-spirit thing, then the arm could become integrated properly as a citizen until people start to judge.

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Quote from: Putnam
Will the Shift+I menu work for the interactions, or will there be a new bind (oh god)?
Quote from: Dsarker
Depending on how they're going to be working with the game, it could be under the same menu as the adventurer crafting.

The "Interact" there was interacting with buildings, which is an old word I didn't remember I had put in for a while.  These abilities/powers are rare, so, yeah, they are in the 'x' menu, separated by whether they are innate or acquired.  It's probably a good place to move in dwarf mode hotkeys to avoid a few keypresses, especially as modded innate abilities become more common for player adv critters (I'm sure it'll eventually reach vanilla as well, especially if you can start as an animal man).

Quote from: B0013
Do this mean you can now strangle people from a distance?

In a way it does...  I haven't seen it happen, but I think the grasp allows it to do that.  You don't control it though...  it's sort of a strange animation, with a basic will of its own.  So you'd have to hope your arm does you proud.

Quote from: Lord Shonus
Will special attacks such as firebreath or webs be handled under the interaction system?

It has not happened yet.  That is the plan though.  It's still in the "hopeful" category for this release.  Fire is annoying because it might not work quite right as a "gas" material, so there'd need to be some kind of alteration for a material breath weapon to work as the template.  Webs are also a bit strange the way they come into being as items.  If I get it done it'll make the game neater though, and allow more options, so it isn't pushed off yet either.

Quote from: Knigel
Also on the topic of necromancy, can the severed body parts of non-organic creatures be revived? I remember in arena mode that, while some severed parts of a bronze colossus were just "bronze colossus #x's bronze" others specified a body-part.

It calls the skeletons "human bone" presently as well, just like the butchery product for animals -- it uses a material name when it is one material (for job materials), which leads to the strangeness.  I have a note to refine it a little bit.  As for who is affected in general, right now it is critters that don't have "CANNOT_UNDEAD" that also have that overtaxed "GENERAL_POISON" class string.  CANNOT_UNDEAD was changed into NOT_LIVING (CANNOT_UNDEAD still works), which isn't quite the same feeling, so I thought I needed something else.  It could very well just be a new arbitrary class string in the end, but I also don't want those to proliferate.

Quote from: penguify
Suppose I have a necromancer companion. If I die, could he reanimate me? Would I still have control?

Also, can creatures be truly resurrected rather than zombified (retaining original soul and/or with a non-decaying body), or resurrected but with an interaction applied? (and if so, do they retain their previous entity allegiance, or change to that of their resurrector?)

A reanimated body doesn't have the same historical information (or a soul/skills).  A resurrection (which exists, for use by mummy disturbance currently) does bring the soul back.  I haven't tried adding in a targeted resurrection to test your scenario, so it would be bad to commit on an answer, but my first guess is that since it is the overall historical figure that carries the "I was a player adventurer" flag, you'd be able to select your adventurer from the retirement list if they were resurrected right after you die -- it would have to be very good timing though.  And even then I'm not sure, since they'd have to make it back to a site and become situated properly there to be recognized by the adventurer selector.  It's the sort of thing that should eventually work properly though, and also which might tie into both the afterlife stuff as well.  If your adventurer goes straight to afterlife mode when you die, with you still in control, loaded in a small slice next to the still-active battle field, you might find yourself fluctuating back and forth (another reason for corpses not to drop items).  For now, you'd have to hope the retirement mechanic gets activated correctly.

Quote from: monk12
Are constructed "Frankenstein Monster" type things going to be in the upcoming version?
Will the player be able to take advantage of that mechanic to complement whatever necromancy they pick up?
Now that specific abilities are attached to specific body parts, will we be able to perform the aforementioned Dragon Head/Hydra Body and expect firebreath as a result?

I know that they were mentioned in a DF talk, but I don't see confirmation of their inclusion in the devlog (apart from a brief "after vampires" from Threetoe,) and that Talk was certainly before the decision to make interactions usable by the player.

Mostly, I'm picturing sewing daggers to the fingers on those severed hands to give them serious damage potential, or sewing a human hand to that same human's lower body in order to animate it separately. Or sewing that human hand onto other normally unraisable things.

We are hoping to get to constructed undead and the stalkers.  You can't mix and match pieces though -- that will take significant work (and should also lead to proper centaur-style critter generation).  Having weapons tacked on to the constructed undead is about as far as we'll be able to take it this time (since that can more or less co-opt the stitch-as-inventory-item code).  Player involvement there is unknown.  It may even end up being in dwarf mode first as a mood before anything else anywhere, since they practically do it already, although there is an atmosphere question there.

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Quote from: Dae
Toady, is there a negative effect to being grabbed by some body part right now ? For example, does being grabbed by the leg slow down your moves, being grabbed by the hammer arm decrease your attack speed, being grabbed by the shield or the shield arm impair you ability to block ? If not,  it could be a good way to make zombies stronger.
Also, zombies usually have an iron hand when it comes to grabbing a prey... will DF zombie have such strength as well ? DF zombie obviously won't have the contaminated bite thing (although something close might be modded in), but will their bite have a higher tendency to cause infections, given the rottyness they're famous for ?
Quote from: Sscral
Currently being grabbed prevents you from moving away unless you win some sort of strength contest with whatever is grabbing you and 'break' their hold, also, you cannot dodge while being grabbed/wrestled. I'm not sure if there are any other effects though

Strength amplification is an angle we're thinking of, yeah.  They might need to be sped up too, until we get to the attack/move speed split, since they not only shamble slowly around, but wait a zillion years before getting their first attack off if they were in movement.  I don't think there are additional wrestling effects aside from what SScral mentioned, unless it restricts attacks when an item is grabbed or something.  There should be more effects, and especially relevant here would be effects from lots of grabs and lots of weight...  and gnawing and stuff.

Quote from: Cruxador
Do the resurrected limbs get names based on their body of origin? If not, are they assigned names when you talk to them? From which entity would those names be sourced?

It gives them a name based on the name of their former owner and the corpse piece name.  I think it can get a little weird though, like it might tack a heroic name on the end after some kills and so on.  It's sort of new ground, because it's a modification of the creature racial name more than an alteration of the individual name, and there just aren't a lot of examples there (the former "skeletal"/"zombie", and unit professions, maybe a few more), but it's also coupled with the need to get the former owner's name across (and not doing that if you never learned their name), so it'll have to tweak everything.  It should be sorted out by release.  But it could get strange, like "Urist the Nightslayer, Aliz's right hand" in the look list, where both interpretations might end up being true.

Quote from: Tov01
Since zombies need a head or grasping body parts to be reanimated, what happens to a resurrected zombie that gets its head and hands chopped of in battle? Does it fall "dead" (and if so, could that be why the zombies are being defeated so easily?), or does it continue "living" without the head and grasp parts?

Yeah, it collapses, but it's generally the animation hitpoint thing that's causing the trouble (coupled with the move/attack speed issue and no compensation for zero skills).

Quote from: KillerClowns
I can't imagine a walking skin putting up much of a fight. Though I suppose the same could be said of a walking skeleton.  How well did the hollow creatures fare in combat?

It sucked, but the zombies are all so bad now it's hard to tell the difference.  It calculates weight of bodies for punches and so on, so all the missing bulk should make the skin kind of embarrassing as a striker.  As a wrestler I think it will be harder than a normal critter if we make all the animated stronger and faster than they are now, if you aren't skilled enough to get away.

Quote from: Mechanoid
Can reanimated dragons breathe fire, and reanimated imps throw fireballs?
Do material properties on skin carry over properly, so an animated imp skin is magma/fire immune?
If material properties do carry over, would it be reasonable to assume that if a creature has metal skin, then the skin that's animated will also be the same metal with all those same properties?
If plant, animal, or metal threads/cloth are sutured/covering various limbs, does the animated skin retain that item in the location it was stitched in/on to or is that information lost when the creature "dies"?
Do creatures even "die" in the same terms that they did in the past (currently released) versions?

I haven't tried, but I imagine the attacks work.  The material properties carry over, because it all points to the same place.  That holds for the separated skin as well.  All stitches are lost.  When corpse containers are implemented, it'll work properly.  The death detection hasn't been altered except for the extra animation conditions (grasp etc), as far as I remember.

Quote from: Neoskel
Do butchered skulls animate? Or do those count as 'skeletal heads' already?

Nah, the butchered bones animate by themselves (as separate objects), so the skeletons are headless if you animate them from a butchery (or otherwise).  Skulls themselves are an odd case, because they don't have teeth or even a head flag, so they don't animate, and they don't get lumped with the other bones.  You still get skeletons properly from heavily rotted zombies.  It has to understand the relationship between teeth and a skull before the basic animation will work right, and then there's the skull's relationship to the spine that needs to be worked out.  In many cases, even if the skull and other bones are detached, you'd still want them to animate together, and that might just take some kind of structural grouping tag for the animation effect.
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Askot Bokbondeler

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #1964 on: August 24, 2011, 10:00:47 am »

thanks for the fresh batch of answers, toady
Quote from: Dwarfu
Will world gen "heros" ever assume the role of treasure hunter and go after these items, or will they just be looking for kills?

Probably when we go for the treasure hunter role stuff on the dev page, but perhaps before, just to get artifacts flowing around a bit.  The movement of artifacts should be one of the main potential driving forces of events.  It would be fun to develop a rivalry and to hunt them down once we've got tracking and interrogation, if it comes to that.
does this mean there will be artifacts created during worldgen? how soon do you expect to work on it?
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