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[Staalo]

I'm trying out a new fortress in an old .40.24 world, to continue the stories of some of my familiar characters. However, being genned in an old version this world has no art or science at all, since no-one has written a book, composed a poem or played a note of music, ever. This makes libraries and taverns pretty boring places.

Can any of this be remedied in fortress mode? I suppose I could, for instance, staff my libraries fully with unskilled scholars and hope they eventually make new discoveries and write books about them. Maybe they'd even spread their knowledge to the world in general somehow.

How about music, poetry or dance? Am I out of luck with those or could new forms spontaneously emerge in a tavern stuffed with performers?

[Fleeting Frames]

Iirc in archcrystal, they could independently research new discoveries by pondering, yes.

Don't know about others; you might edit announcement texts to have D_D:BOX:P:R on them, instead of just A_D. Perhaps try it with quick sealed 1x1 test embark first.

[PatrikLundell]

Music, poetry, dances and books are supposed to be continued to be "invented" during game play (I only have experience with books, as far as I know). However, I suspect a world lacking the infrastructure for these things may not get them by upgrading the old save. I'd check to see if you can make papyrus, vellum, quires, etc (which I suspect you can't, in parallel with how upgrading saves from step ladder less worlds did not add step ladder production to the workshops). If you can't make writing material you can't make books.
I'd guess the art forms don't require research, but I still suspect the required DF infrastructure is missing.

Note that all of this is guesswork, however.

[Staalo]

Well, I guess there's only one way to find out: experimentation! I'm going to hire a lot of scholars and performers and see what they come up with. True, I'll probably have to mod in all the book-related items and reactions first, but if that's the only thing to get the scholars publishing it's not a big thing.

It will be interesting to see what effect (if any) this has on the outside world. Can scholars and performers take on apprentices in fortress mode?

[Fleeting Frames]

I think you might also have to modify your entities/civs to have this section (i.e. from entity:mountain) [not sure]:

   [WANDERER]
   [BEAST_HUNTER]
   [SCOUT]
   [MERCENARY]
   can also use SCHOLAR:ALL
   [SCHOLAR:PHILOSOPHER]
   [SCHOLAR:MATHEMATICIAN]
   [SCHOLAR:HISTORIAN]
   [SCHOLAR:ASTRONOMER]
   [SCHOLAR:NATURALIST]
   [SCHOLAR:CHEMIST]
   [SCHOLAR:GEOGRAPHER]
   [SCHOLAR:DOCTOR]
   [SCHOLAR:ENGINEER]

Might need to use dfhack to propagate it to existing civs, not sure.

Also, yes, they can get apprentices, provided they have competent+ teacher skill and good skill in relevant scholarly topics (10+ I think). This will create a gamelog message by default, could box it as it is kind of rare but I've seen it in 42.06.

[Sanctume]

If you have an old version save, load to a new one, then retire the fort. 

Reclaim with selected scholars and musicians void dwarfs.  Build the fort with writing materials, library, and tavern.  Buy instruments.  Run it for some years. 

Do scholars show up in the library?  or Bards?

Retire the fortress with the founding void dwarfs skilled. 
Create a new fortress far away, and see if the void dwarfs "move on" and skill up or make original books or art, and see if they migrate to new fort?

[Sethatos]

Scholars will make discoveries and take apprentices. People will still tell stories of historical events in the taverns. So far the only visitors to Archcrystal's tavern are warriors who look to relax in the tavern and listen to stories.

You won't be able to write books because the materials to make them are not in the raws. I think it was NCommander who was able to dfhack them in during Doomforests but not sure what that will do the stability of the fortress so I haven't tried.

Also you will no longer be able to create instruments, even the old kind in a 40.24 -> 40.35 fortress so you're SOL if you get mandates for them. And dances, poetry, music won't exist in any meaningful way so bards and performance troupes do not form that I'm aware of.

Scholars do not visit your library from elsewhere either as you cannot create scrolls, books, bookcases, etc.

[PatrikLundell]

If it's just a matter of updating the entity_default.txt copy in the save, that part is probably easy as the file is read by DF on loading the save (changing the merchant progress triggers in the save allowed human merchants to arrive when the no export wealth bug was in effect).
However, you'd also have to get the reactions for creating writing materials and book cases, where ever those are located. Instruments are all created during world gen, so you'd have to do some advanced DFHack hacking to create those (if that's sufficient: you may have to modify stuff not mapped yet).

[Staalo]

Yes, instruments are probably the hardest part; I'm guessing those old-fashioned generic "marble drum" etc. things aren't counted as playable instruments?

My new fortress is already up and running with twenty inhabitants. Am I asking for trouble if I start to do surgery on raws and entity files without starting a new one?

[Fleeting Frames]

Well, Doomforests continued past NCommander's turn, so you can succeed theoretically.

[PatrikLundell]

Old instruments do not work, nor do old books.