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[ImagoDeo]

I'm playing on my project fort (Caving in the world) and a mood finishes, creating a bone axe. Okay, whatever. I was busy with other things at the time, namely preventing my fort from dehydrating to death, so I didn't bother checking its description.

A while later, another mood happened. This time it was an acacia crossbow. I usually check every description for interesting details of history and such, so this time I opened the artifacts tab, remembered I hadn't looked at the battle axe, and selected it first.

It had an image of the crossbow on it.

What. The. HELL?

I can think of two explanations: 1) Dwarves occasionally see the future; or 2) the axe's description wasn't created until the first time I looked at it, ergo it had an image of the crossbow on it.

If it's the second reason, I'm far less freaked out, but if I were in this room alone I'd have shouted aloud when I read the axe's description. It flipped me for a loop.

[Grim Portent]

I remember a thread like this a few months back. It's the second option. To save time/memory the game doesn't determine the details of objects and decorations until you actually look at them.

[FireCrazy]

Must be a bug in the space time continuum of Dwarf Fortress. That is awesome.

Edit: Aw, disappointed that dwarves can't see the future.

[acetech09]

I remember a thread like this a few months back. It's the second option. To save time/memory the game doesn't determine the details of objects and decorations until you actually look at them.

Aye. When any decorations are created, the game just defines them as 'some stuff' to save space, since you don't always look at all the artwork.

So when you look at an old artifact, and another one has been generated since then, the game will resolve that 'some stuff' with important historical events, such as the creation of the newer artifact.

[ImagoDeo]

That's disappointing and reassuring at the same time.

[Dwarf4Explosives]

I can only imagine how amusing such an incident would be with a planepacked artifact.

[Nyxalinth]

It's Schrodinger's Artifact!

Don't be tempted by this to save scum for a cooler description, though.  Save scumming is a good way to wreck your save, unless that was fixed.

[Ubiq]

I can only imagine how amusing such an incident would be with a planepacked artifact.

Imagine what it'd do with two of them in the same fort.

[Dwarf4Explosives]

And if both referenced each other.

[ImagoDeo]

It's Schrodinger's Artifact!

Don't be tempted by this to save scum for a cooler description, though.  Save scumming is a good way to wreck your save, unless that was fixed.

Save scumming hasn't screwed up any of my saves so far. I don't mod beyond a little raw editing, anyway (I wanted to war-train hyenas).

[Quietust]

Save scumming is a good way to wreck your save, unless that was fixed.

It was fixed back in the early 3D versions (with the introduction of the "data/save/current" folder) - it's really only dangerous to use back in 23a if you don't make your own save backups.

[misko27]

It happens. I imagine that when you ask to see the description, the dwarf goes "wait, really? Um, Okay, give me moment."

[SixOfSpades]

Don't be tempted by this to save scum for a cooler description, though.  Save scumming is a good way to wreck your save, unless that was fixed.

From savescumming, I learned that artifact names, but not item types, are chosen at the start of the mood, and even the material from which it's made can be changed if you're lucky (and you care).

I had a weaponsmith--who had no preference for any type of weapon--get a secretive mood, so I saved to see what happened. She made a spear called "Butcherfondle the Rewards of Skinning." I savescummed to try again, and this time it was a crossbow with the same name. I repeated this until she gave me a short sword or an axe, the only weapons that would make sense for butchering or skinning.
A metalcrafter who liked tin got moody, and I said, "Pshaw, tin? Gold is so much cooler, and I have a ton of it. Use some gold instead." Happily, one of the materials that he needed to adorn his artifact was 'metal bars,' so I forbade all the other metal in the fort except gold. Once it was at the workshop, I then forbade the bar of tin, and all the other materials before the gold bar, then un-paused and un-forbade them again. They all got dragged away, and the moody metalcrafter (eventually) made an amulet from the topmost material present in the workshop: gold.

[McDonald]

I made a thread a little time ago, it was about something with an image of an elf bone short sword and the next artifact was an elf bone short sword.