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[Greiger]

Posting to watch the thread.  Nothing to see here, move along.

[Keldane]

- Burrows are a pain to manage, even though they're better than the old "keep dwarves inside" fiasco where they kept rushing towards the exit. Want to keep digging when under siege? You have to essentially double-designate everything, once for digging, once for burrow. To add insult to injury, it's incredibly easy to delete your whole carefully designated burrow by hitting d, which happened to me 3 times (perhaps because d is used so much for designating, and because the interface seems to be designed to trip you up).

I found out a couple of neat things about burrows recently. First and foremost, they can be designated across Z-levels (and they could even before multi-z designations were added). Second, they can be designated in areas that haven't been dug out yet. If you designate everything belowground as one massive burrow, you can dig with impunity, knowing your miners are within the burrow no matter how deep they go.

[isitanos]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

- Removing the ceiling from an area you've already dug up is basically impossible (or finding out how is so hard that I stopped bothering)\

Channels. Watch out for cave-ins.

I meant drilling a hole in the ceiling from inside a excavated room, for example to drain a lake or to make a creature fall down a level. Without ending up with stairs there. Impossible, as far as the forum threads I read said. Digging should be the base of the game, not arcane knowledge...

I found out a couple of neat things about burrows recently. First and foremost, they can be designated across Z-levels (and they could even before multi-z designations were added). Second, they can be designated in areas that haven't been dug out yet. If you designate everything belowground as one massive burrow, you can dig with impunity, knowing your miners are within the burrow no matter how deep they go.

I knew that, but pre-designating the whole underground sounds like a good idea - as long as you don't forget to undesignate the caverns when you discover them.

[Urist McDepravity]

On the scripting topic: I don't think it's a good idea for Toady to spend a lot of effort to support modding for an alpha game. So, when he puts game data or game logic in human-readable text files, it should only be because it eases his work. For me the argument doesn't go much further than that.

At this moment, point is far beyond supporting modding. Toady already crossed "data format"/"scripting language" line with introduction of operators, and chaotically adding new operators on "as needed" basis is very bad idea, its not how you design sane DSL. For example, he added that GO_TO_TAG op, but if you would take time to think about it, you would easily see why it should not exist at all, and, moreover, why whole concept of moving (or caring about it) instruction pointer (tag pointer?) WILL backfire sooner or later, as raws grow.
Spending some time to plan ahead and introduce one of time-proven and robust language designs will save him time in future with debugging ill-behaving raws and rewriting them all to use new language.

[MrWiggles]

Okay, a random question that's actually relevant to caravan arc.

Playing adventurer mode, I've noticed there's a lot of stuff everywhere. All kind of items are so common that people seem to live in total excess. Even dungeons and catacombs are full of stuff, and selling loot from a single room can often make you so insanely rich. And there's nothing to spend the money for, because you can get anything very easily and cheap.

So... how much of the enonomy system is already in? I thought economy was already supposed to be in world-gen and adventurer-mode but to be honest, it still doesn't feel right. What is your end goal in terms of item abundance, prices, general feeling of economy?

Well from the Dev Log and from the Development page, none of it is in Adventure Mode or Fort Mode. Right now it's just having Econ happening in World Generation. We probably won't see Econ in Adventure More or Fort Mode until:

Release 2: Villagers/Farmers schedules/activities ~ Which to me says that, during Adventure Mode, the NPCs will actually use what they've made in World Gen.

Release 3: This will probably provide areas for objects to be used up in Adventure Mode

Release 4:  Merchants Moving Around from place to place during play ~ All those trade routes and supply demand will enter into Adventure Mode.
Fairs ~ Fairs are suppose to be for Fort Mode.

Release 5: Changing populations, food use and other world gen stuff moved to actual play ~ This will probably be the release that'll we see the Econ really impact Adventure Mode.

Release 6: Dwarf mode trading improvements incorporating all the world gen/supply/demand/merchant info etc. ~ This will be the big one for Fort Mode.

Release 8: Personality and needs rewrite ~ This will probably let dorfs use their new items more in line with what the con release has done, but that's probably side line for it's main purpose.

Release 9: Adventure mode trading improvements incorporating all the world gen/supply/demand/merchant info etc. ~ And this will be the big finisher for the Caravan Arc.

Caravan Arc, and the nine release is all about getting the Econ working in the game through "smaller" iterated release. Release 1 wasn't going to incorporate it all into Econ mode into, that was just, on paper,  getting World Gen to have a better econ model, (which also meant that the cities it model also had to be presented in adventure mode ect ect ). And it became what we have today after 11 months.

But yea, looking at the Dev Page we can see somewhat better what is already done, and what's pending.

Spoiler: Site Resources (click to show/hide)

Track resources in quantity instead of just by type
Should depend on trade/tribute relationships as well as available professions and sprawl sites

Spoiler: World Economy (click to show/hide)

Supply/demand based on current available entity resources etc.
Expand on trade/tribute relationships formed in world generation
Realize trade/tribute relationships with actual caravans moving on the map
Ability to get some supply/demand information about nearby locations from travelers and others
Ability to get that information yourself and trade it to merchants, especially as explorer
Replace dwarf mode generated caravans with actual caravans
Improved dwarf mode trade agreements

We can see that there still a lot left for the World Economy left to be implemented.

Optional bonus question 1: As an adventurer in the future, what will I be supposed to spend all my money for? I mean, for all these treasures to have a purpose, I need to have a reason to get them, ideally other than just roleplaying/color. What is this reason?

There are money sinks on the planned releases. But this is an interesting issues though, if you look at table top RPG, or cRPG creating money sinks is a real issue. The PC through their shenanigans just acquire wealth for various reasons. Chiefly it's a great easy to understand reward for the player.

Optional bonus question 2: Item abundance is even worse in fortress mode, where skilled dwarves can churn items so quickly that material/item availability soon becomes a non-issue. Nothing is ever scarce. Again, what is your final goal: how many items should the dwarves have? How easy should it be to obtain stuff? To use examples: Do you want dwarves running in rags and only nobles being able to afford rich clothes, do you want the players to be able to easily get a full plate mail for everyone, etc. etc.?

I bet this question will probably be answer whenever Release 6 and Release 8 are done.

Toady, in the current "bugfix arc", are there any plans to devise a system so that dwarves can intelligently place a lot of furniture and/or constructions without blocking each other, locking themselves up or blocking access to some of the designations? (Me, I'd just build a directed acyclic graph with those, taking into account where dwarves have to stand to build each thing, but you're the boss.)

Those aren't really bugs, just frame work that seem to have been ultimately incorrect. But they probably aren't going to get touched during a bug release, because they're Development Items.

Spoiler: Hauling Improvements (click to show/hide)

Being able to haul multiple small objects
Having multiple dwarves involved with item hauling for a job
Being able to move multiple objects with roughly the same destination at once
Wheelbarrows to haul more objects than can be carried
Minecarts
  Wooden, stone-carved and metal tracks
  Can be filled like stockpiles and moved between destinations
Work animals to tow carts and haul objects

Spoiler: Job Priorities (click to show/hide)

Rework dwarf AI to support job priorities
Rework job assignment process to support priorities set on dwarves or for specific important jobs

[bombzero]

If it went to a vote, id say focus 75% bugs 25% new stuff for a while, that way the game doesn't get 'old' but at the same time bugs do get fixed instead of lingering for years.

[Neonivek]

Even then some of what we have already needs some HEAVY tweeking.

[thvaz]

Even then some of what we have already needs some HEAVY tweeking.

I don't worry much about bugs, but with features that didn't quite work because they are incomplete or weren't thought very throughly before being implemented, and I don't think bugfixing will solve these problems.

[Neonivek]

Even then some of what we have already needs some HEAVY tweeking.

I don't worry much about bugs, but with features that didn't quite work because they are incomplete or weren't thought very throughly before being implemented, and I don't think bugfixing will solve these problems.

I wasn't refering to "bugs". Werewolves are working for example... they just arn't fun in adventure mode.

[bombzero]

Even then some of what we have already needs some HEAVY tweeking.

I don't worry much about bugs, but with features that didn't quite work because they are incomplete or weren't thought very throughly before being implemented, and I don't think bugfixing will solve these problems.

I wasn't refering to "bugs". Werewolves are working for example... they just arn't fun in adventure mode.

meh, thats the eternal, "is this for fortress mode? or adventure mode?" conflict that Toady faces, he often has to decide whats fun where.

although...if vampires only turn on the full moon why are vampire hunters in movies always attacking them only on the full moon, despite knowing who they are... stupid movies.

[thvaz]

Even then some of what we have already needs some HEAVY tweeking.

I don't worry much about bugs, but with features that didn't quite work because they are incomplete or weren't thought very throughly before being implemented, and I don't think bugfixing will solve these problems.

I wasn't refering to "bugs". Werewolves are working for example... they just arn't fun in adventure mode.

Werewolves were one of the bad mechanics I had in mind.

[thvaz]

Even then some of what we have already needs some HEAVY tweeking.

I don't worry much about bugs, but with features that didn't quite work because they are incomplete or weren't thought very throughly before being implemented, and I don't think bugfixing will solve these problems.

I wasn't refering to "bugs". Werewolves are working for example... they just arn't fun in adventure mode.

Werecreatures were one of the bad mechanics I had in mind.

[Cruxador]

On the scripting topic: I don't think it's a good idea for Toady to spend a lot of effort to support modding for an alpha game. So, when he puts game data or game logic in human-readable text files, it should only be because it eases his work. For me the argument doesn't go much further than that.

At this moment, point is far beyond supporting modding. Toady already crossed "data format"/"scripting language" line with introduction of operators, and chaotically adding new operators on "as needed" basis is very bad idea, its not how you design sane DSL. For example, he added that GO_TO_TAG op, but if you would take time to think about it, you would easily see why it should not exist at all, and, moreover, why whole concept of moving (or caring about it) instruction pointer (tag pointer?) WILL backfire sooner or later, as raws grow.
Spending some time to plan ahead and introduce one of time-proven and robust language designs will save him time in future with debugging ill-behaving raws and rewriting them all to use new language.

I don't think it's possible at the current time for Toady to plan ahead enough that the raws can handle everything they will eventually need to. I don't think he could even if he had the necessary formal knowledge to make a truly elegant and robust language, which is decidedly non-trivial. I reckon that an eventual rewrite is inevitable, some time between .70 and .90.

[MrWiggles]

On the scripting topic: I don't think it's a good idea for Toady to spend a lot of effort to support modding for an alpha game. So, when he puts game data or game logic in human-readable text files, it should only be because it eases his work. For me the argument doesn't go much further than that.

At this moment, point is far beyond supporting modding. Toady already crossed "data format"/"scripting language" line with introduction of operators, and chaotically adding new operators on "as needed" basis is very bad idea, its not how you design sane DSL. For example, he added that GO_TO_TAG op, but if you would take time to think about it, you would easily see why it should not exist at all, and, moreover, why whole concept of moving (or caring about it) instruction pointer (tag pointer?) WILL backfire sooner or later, as raws grow.
Spending some time to plan ahead and introduce one of time-proven and robust language designs will save him time in future with debugging ill-behaving raws and rewriting them all to use new language.

I don't think it's possible at the current time for Toady to plan ahead enough that the raws can handle everything they will eventually need to. I don't think he could even if he had the necessary formal knowledge to make a truly elegant and robust language, which is decidedly non-trivial. I reckon that an eventual rewrite is inevitable, some time between .70 and .90.

Yea, it seems that Toady & Threetoes have outlines of they want from whatever feature they happen to be working on next, but they dont have a lot of stuff explicitly planned out in fine detail. The raws were rewritten once, and they'll probably get rewritten a few more times during the course of development.

[Mel_Vixen]

300 Emails! I mean 300 stories/crayons!  i am impressed. Not because the shear number (that too) but how fast you handle them and keep the quality on the same level. Thanks! And thanks to Threetoe too! Heck all the creativity that goes into those stories alone.