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[Michael]

One feature Toady is talking about (which is not this suggestion) is delaying the reporting of deaths in order to facilitate murder mysteries.  I find this problematic, as it will make DF's UI "betray" the player.  The fact that a dwarf is dead can't be hidden from a single-stepping player.  Failing to pause and zoom at the moment of the death just punishes players for un-pausing.

I have another idea for implementing murder mysteries that does not reward obsessive-up-to-eleven play.  This is to provide Privacy to dwarves.

A room can be private space if:

• it is a bedroom
• it is assigned to a dwarf
• it has only a single door
• the player allows the designation

A normal dwarf will never enter another dwarf's private space -- it will be removed from pathing.  To path into his own private space, a dwarf would path to the door and then use special-case code to navigate his own room.

When a dwarf enters his private space, he would become invisible to the player.  Instead, a placeholder symbol would appear in the center of the room, flashing "P" for private.  Normally, the real dwarf will also be in the same room, but a hostile disguised as a friendly dwarf may sneak out of it.  The real dwarf would be invisible like a thief or snatcher.

He won't stick out on a player "head count" because the player will see the placeholder.  The player will know that the "P" means that dwarf has no alibi, but there can be many innocent "P" dwarves at a given moment.

The safest approach for a dwarven murderer is to choose a victim who is also in private (sleeping or on break) -- then the death will not be noticed for a while.  The "P" placeholder for the victim will long outlast the actual dwarf.  Deaths of working dwarves will be noted immediately, since an attentive player would see the stopped progress.

One parameter the player could tune is the time threshold before a special privacy-ignoring job is generated to check on a dwarf who hasn't been seen.  Each "false-alarm" check would cause unhappy thoughts, so a player wouldn't want to set it too frequent.

Turning off privacy would avoid the murder mysteries, but dwarves with no privacy will be unhappy.  They'd rather have a private bed in a closet, than an open furnished 3x3.

Players may decide to deliberately give new migrants unprivate bedrooms for awhile, in an effort to "quarantine" out any hidden vampires.  The migrants would "earn" a private room after they've gone longer than a vampire could last without feeding.  Actual vampires would either die or be caught feeding in the open.  Clever vampires might fake going berserk over lack of privacy, in an effort to beg out of quarantine so they can start hunting.

[Imp]

I'd enjoy playing within this circumstance

[peskyninja]

A normal dwarf will never enter another dwarf's private space -- it will be removed from pathing.  To path into his own private space, a dwarf would path to the door and then use special-case code to navigate his own room.

I don't agree wit this, removing something from pathing is to brutal, they could try to avoid the room though.

[Reudh]

Perhaps if they've been in the private room for an inordinately long amount of time a friend, passing acquaintance or anyone who knows the dwarf can do the job 'Check up on <Urist mcSecretive>', seeing if they're alive. If they're not, then murder reported. If they are, then depending on the level of friendship they get either a happy thought or an unhappy thought.
'Urist McWeird's private time was interrupted recently.'
'Urist McFriendly was pleased his friends care about him.'

[RabidAnubis]

Perhaps if they've been in the private room for an inordinately long amount of time a friend, passing acquaintance or anyone who knows the dwarf can do the job 'Check up on <Urist mcSecretive>', seeing if they're alive. If they're not, then murder reported. If they are, then depending on the level of friendship they get either a happy thought or an unhappy thought.
'Urist McWeird's private time was interrupted recently.'
'Urist McFriendly was pleased his friends care about him.'

I like this idea.  People visiting eachother to check on eachother to see if they are okay.  I think this could be used in more private hospitals too- people visiting patients and stuff just to check on them.  Maybe if it was a hero of the fortress a lot of people would come in and tell him thanks before he passes... or if the hero checked on people they would gain a happy thought along with their relatives.

[hudders]

I like this idea. The extent to which a dwarf enjoys privacy should be tied to their personality.

[SixOfSpades]

As far as pathing into private spaces is concerned, Doors could be assigned to individual dwarves (and possibly also immediate family members) just as Beds and the like currently are. Only the owner of the door would have the key, though certain nobles, especially Military/Justice nobles, would have master keys to most areas.

[IT 000]

Perhaps if they've been in the private room for an inordinately long amount of time a friend, passing acquaintance or anyone who knows the dwarf can do the job 'Check up on <Urist mcSecretive>', seeing if they're alive. If they're not, then murder reported. If they are, then depending on the level of friendship they get either a happy thought or an unhappy thought.
'Urist McWeird's private time was interrupted recently.'
'Urist McFriendly was pleased his friends care about him.'

I recommend this only be done during breaks. But great ideas here

[612DwarfAvenue]

Perhaps if they've been in the private room for an inordinately long amount of time a friend, passing acquaintance or anyone who knows the dwarf can do the job 'Check up on <Urist mcSecretive>', seeing if they're alive. If they're not, then murder reported. If they are, then depending on the level of friendship they get either a happy thought or an unhappy thought.
'Urist McWeird's private time was interrupted recently.'
'Urist McFriendly was pleased his friends care about him.'

I like this idea.  People visiting eachother to check on eachother to see if they are okay.  I think this could be used in more private hospitals too- people visiting patients and stuff just to check on them.  Maybe if it was a hero of the fortress a lot of people would come in and tell him thanks before he passes... or if the hero checked on people they would gain a happy thought along with their relatives.

+1, definitely.

[Starver]

I'm feeling trepidation already about the possibility of the vampiric attacks and delayed reports, to be honest.  And I see what you're suggesting to solve the issues, which are already present in shape of the kidnapping of kids and stealing of materials by macaques/whatever.


Ultimately, it reminds me of some wargaming campaigns where you have a whole theatre-of-battle map (the entire north of the Eastern front, the whole Pacific, even entire extra-solar star clusters in a futurustic genre) where you shuffle units around and play various key battles (while others are dealt with almost like with Risk).  But the GM/whatever-you-call-him knows that one of the sub-generals beneath a certain player is lying about his ability to send 1000 tanks into a certain battle, or that a given commander has gone off and started to annexe a completely different part of the map (by accident or design), despite the reports being given the player.

The battles that are played may even be ficticious.  Perhaps the result is taken but adjusted (a bare win might turn into a slight loss, or a loss of all units is a loss only of those who turned up...  alternately, the enemy might not have been there, either... if opposing forces are both being played by participants with their own privileged information available only to them, both could receive word that they dominated the area and are in full control...) or perhaps it is calculated from the 'real' situation by the controlling GM.  Every now and then the players are


Anyway, the point of that description is that if we go down the way of Private Information in the game changes the whole thing.  It may just be the (relatively) easily-discoverable fact that Urist McSuchNSuch might well now be dead, or it may involve "Private Time" such as described...  but it could easily end up with designating a defensive wall, it looks like the wall has been built but (until you get a corroborating or adverse report on the situation by sufficient third-parties to the one that 'pretended' to build it) you're never really sure if it's there.  That'd be a logical extension, but would make it a completely different game.

I'm quite happy that I'm not an omnipotent entity (pretty much so, as I need to jump through hoops to get done most of what I want done), but I'm getting cold feet at the possibility that my existing omniscience is to be eroded further in this game.


Don't get me wrong.  I like what your suggestions are doing with the changing situation, I'm just a little worried about the original change.

[knutor]

The mystery I see, will be finding which corpse in that awful long dead list is the one missing.  Especially if the coder groups dead with missing, instead of civilians with missing.  I'm kind of hoping he lets us filter out the dead from everything else, instead of making us search that awful long list of sortable thru another release.  Going Bugeyed, FTW!  Toad spoke of dividing it into four cats, but I cannot see that even being worth doing in the end, if he's just going to hide stuff.  It won't show, regardless, unless someone with Observation high enough happens to stand in bite range.  I see this turning into male vampires biting female dwarfs.  Then slowly the female eating most of the forts males.  Only cure is an observant sheriff, spiking her and her flock.  If sheriff is too late we end up playing Female Vampire Fortress.  Which could be fun, too.  Only thing that worries me, is if that long bugeyed list of confusion is going to remain inside the u key.

Knutor

[MrWiggles]

I think you're all assuming that bodies will be unlisted for any real amount of time for fort mode. Toady spoken to about a week, of fort time. So depending on your frame rate, the body will be missing maybe, a couple of hours? Just one body? Its not that large of a deal. Even if you do spot the body being murdered, you can't act upon anyway until the dorfs inform themselves.

Its not like every fort, is going to get vampires and werewolves, and its not like forts will get very many when they do get'em.

I think you're all getting overally worried about something, that's been loosely described.

[Michael]

Even if you do spot the body being murdered, you can't act upon anyway until the dorfs inform themselves.

If that was true, there would be no reason to delay reporting.

Rather, the player (unless he finds the plight of vampire victims hilarious) would just use the same extrajudicial execution techniques today employed against nobles.