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[dragdeler]

Hello everyone,

I hope this suggestion hasn't been made too many times and that the title isn't too vague, if so forgive me; let's get straight to it.

As DF strips itself of it's game-ish past and leans more and more towards a simulation, I feel like some conjunctures that once served as balancing aspects, have become obsolete impositions. What I mean is the unability to switch flawseamlessly between game modes. I am well aware, that constant access to legends mode would be somehow cheating, but there might be more elegant solutions such as: you can only enter legends mode entries of things you're able to "point at on your screen", or, you can access parts of the legends mode via books, that would be complicated but the information retrieved wouldn't feel cheaty. Switching between Fortress mode and Adventurer mode could be exploited in a quite overpowered way, but we shouldn't forget how one's only able to be at one place at once. It would be pretty cool to be able to take control over raiding parties, effectively playing the squad leader as adventurer with the other staff as his companions.

As it is for now, where all adventurers are "new-borns", with unretiring being notoriously... how should I say... unreliable?! (are those bugs, is it completly unexpected or just poorly executed behaviour?) It seems next to impossible to weave intricate stories where the characters are at different locations.

I think this resumes my toughts quite nicely, I will try to not ramble about for much longer but consider this: When economics shall be reintroduced one day, imagine them merged with the upcoming expeditions AND what is described above. Stir and wait for it. Vehicles, populated and played as fortresses, standing still in the middle of the screen, with the map moving around it. And once you bring in that magic stuff you could even imagine them airborne... sweet pipe dreams 



Hope it wasn't too long and/or too poorly written, eager to hear your toughts on this.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Legends isn't really cheating any more. DF is creating a world, not just a place to play fortresses. Seems like people who avoid it because of ancient fears of "spoilers" are ignoring most of Toady's work for the past few years. The only issue is that it's difficult to access once you start playing (dfhack just about manages it and almost never destroys the world in the process). Next few releases should start to define what an entity should and shouldn't know about, then the clever concepts into viewing selected legends can start to be introduced.

Leading the patrols you send out is in the dev notes.

Playing historical characters as adventurers had been mentioned as a long time goal.

Bugs in unretiring? Only in fortress mode. Adventurer works perfectly. Fortress mode bugs are, like all bugs, to be fixed at some point (an attempt was made during the last release - didn't work so well).

So...what's your specific suggestion? Yes, the game isn't finished but it's heading in the direction you want it to.

[dragdeler]

Legends isn't really cheating any more. DF is creating a world, not just a place to play fortresses. Seems like people who avoid it because of ancient fears of "spoilers" are ignoring most of Toady's work for the past few years. The only issue is that it's difficult to access once you start playing (dfhack just about manages it and almost never destroys the world in the process). Next few releases should start to define what an entity should and shouldn't know about, then the clever concepts into viewing selected legends can start to be introduced.

Yes I am pretty ignorant about the deeper aspects of legends mode, shouldn't have started with those examples, it looks like there is emphasis on it.

Leading the patrols you send out is in the dev notes.

Yup it was a bad example, I mean taking control over any living being, at any time, I guess my specific suggestion is to get rid of the 14 day restriction. I understand this should allow me to do it, but I can't get that script to do anything.

Also I'm a little unsure about this so correct me if I'm wrong: you can only play adventurer mode with dwarves you specifically created for it, so all their lives "begin" the moment you start playing. That is not counting in said script I can't get to work.



I feel like at the moment the game has it's 14 day restriction to keep me from cheating, but what if wanted to run several stories at once that sometimes cross path (if I'm lucky enough to see everything work out as the story I anticipate, you know "life is what happens when you were planning other things"). At first glance that looks like granting the player omnipotence, but the fact that you can only live each moment from one perspective, should make up for it.

Imagine you decide to take control over that one citizen that caught your attention, you decide to realize his dreams whatever they may be so you stear him trough adventurer mode. For roleplaying elements you might decide to tip off the target via a third person, in order to make things more interesting. The whole thing develops in some kind of hunt or race. And when you come back 3 months later than expected it was all in vein because the fortress got burned down by a FB

Yes, the game isn't finished but it's heading in the direction you want it to.

That's probably accurate



ps: The ability to let time pass as it does in world generation would be nice too, but I bet there is allready somebody asking for that every few days.

[Shonai_Dweller]

At the moment yes, adventurers (of lots of different races, not just dwarves) aren't pre-exisitng historical figures. Although the option exists to create a character entirely out of nothing (outsider human or Intelligent wilderness creatures), the standard option is to choose to create a character who could exist based on the existing populations. So it's not quite nothing.

However the idea of the adventure being any historical character has been mentioned as something that'll happen someday. (As has some kind of retrospective history creating engine, but that seems a little too complicated).

Yeah, we'd all like to get back to worldgen, but it's really, really difficult. Toady's mentioned that it's way too complicated to think about. So...perhaps, maybe will happen one day but will need some serious dedicated time put to it and right now that's a little too much work for no real gain.

Yeah, agree that the 14 day gap to play adventurer does seem a little arbitrary. Seems like something easy enough to make more flexible but I imagine some time would need to be taken to consider if it'll just break the game balance completely. After all, if you can just take over the fortress vampire and kill yourself, or position a character in a way to lure the forgotten beast into a trap then there's no real 'game' left to site mode. Off-site squad control first I think.

Before that happens, it seems that it's be easy to implement transitioning from adventurer to fortress without having to wait two weeks. It's only a simple step up from adventurer site building to actual site management. But maybe it'll wait until all the other sites have properly playable thought-out site modes.

[dragdeler]

I imagine some time would need to be taken to consider if it'll just break the game balance completely. After all, if you can just take over the fortress vampire and kill yourself, or position a character in a way to lure the forgotten beast into a trap then there's no real 'game' left to site mode. Off-site squad control first I think

Absolutely! Maybe imposing a time-out only when you switch between member of DIFFERENT civilisations would be a start. The thing is some won't be able to resist the temptation while others will regret not being able to "help the villain" to enhance roleplaying aspects. I heard that concerning magic, Toady was thinking about implementing an option in the world generation to choose a degree of myth (some scale where 0 would be all beast and gods are rumours, and high values might even make squirrels boil over with magic). In a similar fashion, maybe we could add an option into world gen where the player decides his level of omnipotence ahead?

Yeah, we'd all like to get back to worldgen, but it's really, really difficult. Toady's mentioned that it's way too complicated to think about. So...perhaps, maybe will happen one day but will need some serious dedicated time put to it and right now that's a little too much work for no real gain.

That is sad but good to know, I only discovered DF a few months ago, I would have to read all the old Q&A to get to know those kind of details. Thank you for being well informed.

But maybe it'll wait until all the other sites have properly playable thought-out site modes.

Say what? If that's in the roadmap I'm allready borderline euphoric.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Check out the dev notes (there's links at the top of the suggestions forum). The "short term plans" are kept up to date with what's going on in the upcoming release and plans for the next couple. Then there's a huge list of 'other stuff' that's a little old now as some of it already exists, but if you read through it you'll see there's an awful lot which hasn't been implemented yet.

Toady Q&A hunting is kind of challenging. The good stuff is scattered across various interviews all over the internet. But there's lots off good stuff on Bay12Games' own Dwarf Fortress page too.

 For a start, read through "Threetoes stories". These are the kind of 'generic fantasy stories' that dwarf fortress aims to recreate through procedural generation one day. Each concludes with an analysis of what would be required for such stories to be realized.

Then DFTalk is good to see the direction they're thinking about.

There was a recent 3(4?) part interview in PC Gamer, link should be on the dev-blog somewhere if you scroll down a little. The magic system stuff is very interesting. You'll find a video demonstrating an early version of mythgen somewhere too (should be on youtube, it's from gdc 2016).

Explore legends, have Fun in-game, and dont be afraid to tweak with the raws to see what's possible.

[dragdeler]

"Threetoes stories"

They are so awesome.