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[Max White]

As I recall, dwarfs don't know the boiling and melting point of rocks. They just act like they do because you do. When they build a flood gate out of a magma proof stone, you need to carefuly tell them what stone to use, else they will throw up any old flood gate and the fortress will drown in fire. This system would mean that (If you chose to use 100% randomised raws) you would need to figure out what is and it not safe, and that could be a lot of fun!

[Lex Talionias]

beats the fuck out of "yeah, i instantly know all about this" hell it expands it to "yeah, i instantly know all about this but still use it for inappropriate tasks"

[Max White]

Well yes, the current system is very nice. Atleast I think that is what you meant from your post. I mean it is not that I am offended by swear words, but as they act as 'black' words, that is to say they have no relevant meaning, it can make your post misleading.

Taking into account the fact that the only thing you realy know about a stone when it comes out of a wall is it's name, and it is up to you to figure out M.P and B.P that isn't so unrealistic. You also have to remember that we are not the first dwarfs in the world, the dwarven civ has had hundreds of years to figure out that the genned stone called 'gibbonite' is a flux stone.

[Scoops Novel]

you know, that's precisely where i'd got to in my  thought process. In my opinion, depending on where the civilisations had settled and where they'd struck the earth would affect the knowledge of new (to the player at least) minerals. Some would be well-known throughout the world, some your dwarves would discover for the first time and have to analyse, and now that toadys working on getting the world gen process into the active game and making the world alive i'd love to see new minerals being discovered while i played in adventurer mode and huge wars and migrations occurring, or a secret call out for geologists and wizards.

After all, even in fortress mode the mountainhomes are going to be very interested if you discover something new, and as politics develop deciding on whether you'll give some to your allies or hoard it for yourself would be interesting. I'm with sockless on having the option to keep the current and/or realistic option, but random minerals should be the default.

[BeefotronX]

Had some thoughts, necroing this thread.

I imagine the system for identifying unknown minerals-- which may include real minerals unknown to the Dwarves in a given world as well as mythical minerals unique to that world-- should work something like this:
Miners keep a few empty vials on their person.
The first time they encounter an unknown mineral, a powdered sample is collected and handed off to an alchemist to identify. In general, it would minimize the micromanagement problems if the first time a new material is discovered or smelted, it is assumed that a small sample is saved for the alchemist to analyze.
The alchemist does his work and issues a report listing its properties. This might have to be done a few times if the mineral can be smelted, since the metal and any alloys might have to be analyzed separately.


Hollow geodes of mythical mineral would make nice mini-HFS-like prisons for Forgotten Beasts.

I would say the most interesting part of this would be the possible alloys involving mythical metals.   One might require two different mythical metals together and be functionally useless but make fantastically valuable jewelry, while another might be an enhanced variety of steel involving a relatively low ratio of one mythical metal.

[Putnam]

Powder wouldn't be altogether useful for determining properties that dwarves would care about.

[Dirst]

Powder wouldn't be altogether useful for determining properties that dwarves would care about.

Probably makes sense that you'd need to get a boulder or two to the alchemist's workshop.  Either need to split the hauling into a separate job, keep a wheelbarrow handy, or pick your alchemist based on strength and endurance.

[BeefotronX]

The reason I think it would be an excessive cost to burn a whole unit of the material to identify it, is that if there are going to be ultra-rare mythical materials, that could very well wipe out your initial haul-- if, say, you have one that generates in small, sparsely distributed nodules.  Although, generally speaking, it might not be too bad of a system.   From a realism standpoint, one boulder or bar should amount to virtually a lifetime supply of laboratory samples.

I agree that it would not be desirable, from a simulation load perspective, to generate many additional tiny items of limited use.

[Cub]

it seems that many are worried that this might replace the current ores. well, keep in mind, every feature you can't turn off is a bug.
i started to work on a tool to generate raws. maybe an external tool which generates raws on demand might be a well option for those who want it and leave the raws as they are for the others. i'd also appreciate if there'd be native mod support, like that i can create a subfolders in the raw folder and set ingame which of these to use.

i just finished a system which takes rules in BNF format and substitutes non-terminals with random terminals. that also works for names. just numbers might be either tricky to do in bnf or require some tool to generate them, which would make it easier to control the actual range. well, the approach seems promising so far, not sure how far i will make it. i guess other stuff than just stones and ores, as i have now, wouldn't be much more work either. at least reactions and items seem to be as simple.

one way to learn about the stuff ingame would be adding prospecting or such. but well, at the moment living just ingame without the wiki is hard. so the tool could generate documentation for the stuff it generates as well.

just keep in mind, procedural generation isn't a final solution. it just randomizes names and properties of items but after some time you get used to it and it wont be that exciting anymore since the core gameplay mechanics will remain the same. borderlands did show that well.

[IndigoFenix]

I wouldn't mind if the game generated random minerals with magical properties, but kept the mundane ones real-world.

Same deal with animals once the magic biome system becomes more fleshed out; mundane areas have mundane animals but sphere-aligned biomes might have randomly generated creatures/plants in it.

[Putnam]

I wouldn't mind if the game generated random minerals with magical properties, but kept the mundane ones real-world.

To be fair, it's really not hard to make unrealistic minerals lol.

[90908]

Just putting in my two cents here on what sort of randomly generated minerals there could be.

A "SUPAH EVIL" metallic substance could spread in a manner similar to Terraria corruption if something is done to it, perhaps releasing toxic fumes as well. In other words, a plague but with 100% more rock.