Thanks to Valtam, Willfor, Trif, MrWiggles, Eric Blank, monk12, Putnam, Caldfir, Cruxador, NW_Kohaku, BradUffner, hermes, Knight Otu, King Mir, Aseaheru, My Name is Immaterial, PTTG??, Parisbre56, Whatsifsowhatsit and anybody I missed for answering or helping to answer questions this time around. If your question doesn't appear below, it may very well have been answered shortly after you asked it, so it might be worth it to zip over to your post history and check out the thread from that point.
I once generated, by chance, an all-kobold world, and they had no one to steal from but night trolls and megabeasts. What happens if an entity appears somewhere cut off from other peoples vital for their role? Like, for instance, an isolated continent inhabited by a single goblin nation? Do they change their behavior somewhat or search for nonexistent trade partners / victims?
There's nothing interesting at this point. They'll have their trade goods etc. based on the local environment, and they'll trade with local trade partners, but they don't make any deeper adaptive decisions or anything.
I guess this is a somewhat abstract question, but with the personality/AI work it is somewhat relevant:
Right now the fundamental way players interact with their dorfs is by assigning jobs and ordering stuff built, just like in older versions. Will this ever change, for example dorfs choose professions, or some kind of economy system doles out job assignments?
There are people that want to handle job decisions to people that want the game to play more like Majesty or even more hands-off than that (e.g., just a watch-only simulation). I don't have any particular plans to change how things work right now, but I'm not really wedded to it either. In an ideal world, I guess, as the "official will of the fortress", your level of control would depend on the sort of government/society you are running, but it's wishful thinking to say that I'd be able to work with that any time soon or to make the game more things for more people.
The human keeps are so large there's no way for archers to shoot down from their towers. Will they be scaled down, or will the archer code be changed to shoot further downwards?
Whenever I get around to fixing bugs like this, hopefully I'd change any problems with the shooting rather than altering the map to workaround them.
1. You mentioned succession stuff in the last FotF, and said heir take up the place of the king instantly. What if the heir is a one year old, do he still get the position? Did you implement/plan to implement a regency mechanic, with an ambitious regent getting claims to the throne, or holding the power until the regent reach a certain age, 12 years old for example.
I haven't implemented regency, though, yeah, it does make you think about these things while working with the code. I'm not sure when I'll get around to that sort of thing, since there are some annoyances setting it up. As it stands, three year olds will make decisions and so on. It's a work in progress.
2. Will Dwarf and Elvens sites have items they usually do, like small breastplates in dwarf sites? Will there be steel items now?
I haven't addressed any weird material deficits at this point. They'll have the items they create in world gen, and those are all dwarf-sized for dwarves.
3. Do you plan to do something for the next release about the time the undead raise? Some people think it's not so much, but it's basically impossible to reach a necromancer without turning undead or sneaking through. In that subject, do you plan to add melting points so the undead can be destroyed by lava? Do you plan to nerf down player characters that turn vampire/necromancer, because those are unstoppable killing machines right now.
Is there some planing on a better undead system? I mean, it gets tiring to fight animated hair, hides and such, so what I'm really asking is that if you are thinking into a more "classical" representation of undead, where the pieces that fall don't stay alive and ultimately only smashing the head or decapitation would stop the zombies. And if not, do you see a system like that possible to mod?
I haven't changed it for the next release yet, though if I remember a goal is to at least get through "pulping" before the next release comes up to avoid permanent reraises. I don't have a problem with extended the interaction effects to allow more targeting information concerning tissues or whatever it would be, but beyond pulping I don't have a timeline for any of that.
4. Don't remember if you answered this already, but do you plan to do something in this release about the dwarf/human issue with nature and critters? I mean, it's love it or kill it. Every animal runs from a dwarf or tries to kill it. Will we have more "shy" animals who usually run form you and some others that don't mind you passing as long as you don't go on a killing spree or start shouting.
I haven't addressed specific different behaviors, but ever since the rewrite with the bandits and non-lethal combat, animals have been different. There's a bit of a combat deficit now that needs to be addressed, and I'm not sure exactly where it'll land by the time of the release. The AI requires reasons for everything now, and I haven't hit all of the old conflict points (and some of them, like geese attacking you for the glory of the town, hopefully won't be re-added).
Will we have creatures nesting in trees?
There's nothing like that right now. Just another one of those things that it would be nice to have at some point.
Will there be holidays and festivities in future releases? Like will their be traditions and such like dancing or feasintg, etc? and will they change over time or revert to the more traditional forms at points due to conflicting cultures? and will your adventurer be able to partake in these events?
We've all of that in the dev pages in some form or another, but there's no timeline, as usual. Taverns and inns aren't so far off in the grand scheme of things, and something will happen somewhere there with regard to music or games or at least one thing that isn't purely functional.
For a limited legends screen, will it be something you need to talk to caravans for,with each caravan providing different info, thereby also promoting trade or will there be something else? i think it might be cool to see my dwarves talking to caravan guards and learning that say, a king has a new lover or something. you know, gossip.
With history progressing even during Fortress Mode, would we see a diplomat coming to tell us that all of the immediate royal family were killed during the "Siege of Pointy Sticks", and the only living heir is a potash maker in the fort? That would be interesting.
Will there be any kind of conduit of information from the rest of the world to your fort regarding succession and army activities? Asking caravans or diplomats for news etc.
If so, will that information be useful? Being able to predict imminent goblin attacks because a nearby village was recently razed, for instance.
If so will it be through the liason? replacing one of the "you've carved a fine place for yourself" dialogues with some news of what is going on in the world?
I've always liked the idea of learning actually information from the visitors to your fortress, but I've never been able to move on it because nothing happened in the world post world-gen. Now that some things actually happen in the world, we can move toward this, but it might not happen for this time.
Toady, if you could clarify: since retired adventurers become members of the civilization they retire in and are historical figures, does that mean they have a chance to be paired off to a marriage partner, move to their partner's town (or their partner to theirs) and raise children, just like any other historical figure?
Yeah, that's how the situation stands at this point. I don't recollect placing any specific barriers for them. It's the kind of thing that people might want to have some control over, but there's currently no mechanic in place to give you any control over their behavior.
How quickly do entities move across the world map, and does the speed vary for groups of different sizes or take difficult terrain into account?
I'm not going to address terrain difficulties until you or your dwarves actually experience problems like that traveling zoomed in -- like having thick underbrush or mud lead to slow travel. The only real problem now are rivers and buildings, in terms of your own travel, and traveling armies are subject to some restrictions there (for convenience, I haven't messed with rivers away from towns yet vs. army pathing). Group size travel speeds is one of the in-limbo items in the notes for this release. I don't imagine it would take more than a few minutes to add in some simple form, but it hasn't yet been added.
Do you plan to add the philosopher back later with more usefulness? Or are they scrapped?
The philosopher as a single dwarf called "the philosopher" is likely out. Adding dwarves with a philosophical bent that get into arguments and get followers and sway segments of the population toward one way of thinking or another are something we'd like to do.
Current what needs to be added or thought through before we can start seeing Regeneration (or rather the ability to regrow bodyparts or heal major damage)?
There are choices to be made regarding ordering of the tissues as they return and how to store a half-restored tissue, but I don't think any of that'll end up being a big deal. If you want to have the "little hand" thing, where a little hand grows out of an arm stub and then grows back to full size, that'd also need to be a decision of some kind, but I might have the variables for that sitting around, sort of. That case would be a little more annoying.
With new mobility-related stuff, does that mean we can see grappling hooks happening?
Also, slightly unrelated, but are there plans for aimed ranged attacks (firing and throwing), so that we aren't just hoping that we hit something worth hitting?
Back when I started climbing for this release, I think grappling hooks was sort of a wish-list feature that was going in depending on whether or not I felt like I had the time, and I haven't really gotten to anything with ropes at this point at all.
I'm all for being able to aim at what you want to aim at, and it's the kind of thing I imagine will happen fairly early on next time I mess with ranged combat, but I don't know when that'll be.
How will "turns" take place when players can use abilities that take dozens of normal turns? Will we be able to cancel out of actions or give orders to followers during long wind-ups?
Conversely, what about "held" actions, like a snake coiled and waiting to strike, a crocodile waiting at the water's edge for an ambush, or a thief waiting to pounce on a passerby from hiding, with some sort of wind-up already taken place, and an action primed to go? Will there be a way for "turns" to take place at a pace that makes sense for a player to watch the action and understand what's going on? (Or will held/readied actions not exist at all?)
For that matter, if there's a difference between movement and other action speeds, when you skip a turn, which speed does the game use to determine when your turn comes up next?
If we can sit there waiting on a frame-by-frame basis, and we have "reactions" that let us interrupt the actions of another unit, can we just sit there skipping frame-by-frame to interrupt all the actions of an enemy?
What are your current plans regarding how combat penalties for pulling stunts to behave? As in, what sort of "flow" to combat do you want it to have? Do you want combat to basically be stand-up attack trading like now, but with just putting in penalties for doing crazy things, or can trying to be Jet Li wind up with you flat on your face?
Do you want to make combat less a matter of hacking at opportune times, or more of trying to knock the opponent down to get that opportunity to strike "the decisive blow"?
And if we have a lot of experience in the appropriate skills, can we Jet Li and make other people flat on their faces?
With being able to perform multiple attacks at once such as dual-wielding, will any special affects happen from kicking with both feet at once? Will we fall to the ground if we attempt this, or are we assumed to be ninjas?
Might things currently try to perform as many attacks as once, regardless of penalties? Can we set things to do that?
But seriously, will creatures be able to queue a combination of attacks and abilities? Or even attacks and jobs... It would be amusing to see one of my Deathcaster Sapiocoatl fire off a venom web at an attacker, then promptly harvest it for +frozen sapiocoatl venom thread+.
The only example I remember from upthread about an ability taking "dozens" of turns was the post-fire period of a ranged weapon, which probably shouldn't exist as such. That needs to be replaced by loading. But in general, I haven't set it up yet so that you can baby-sit your actions as they progress, and I don't know if you'll be able to do that. As a default, especially for movement, it should be that you do one action to completion when you start one action, and the next easiest thing is to queue a few actions and then let you commit to them, in which case you might get control back when either one or all of them are finished. Which way is best is probably action-dependent. The period-key wait is still used to pass a good chunk of time, so it just sends you forward 10 clicks. Reaction moments are an automatic event, independent of the wait structure, but they are analogous to things you'd be able to do if you had a 1-click wait, pretty much, once more options are in place. There could be some sort of issue about waiting for reactions if you had a 1-click wait, but since you wouldn't have an action, and the enemy would be mid-action, you are the one at a disadvantage, and you are dependent on the game to give you a chance to interrupt the in-progross enemy action, and that can be made character skill-based, which is a fine thing. It just might be abusable until it is set up correctly, taking 1-click waiting into consideration.
I agree that it's better to have a fight with some structure to it, where it feels like there has been a flow of what has happened, rather than a single opportunity that came up, but I think there was a characterization of that path as a "puzzle game" which I don't think is the direction I want to go, at least if that means there's an abstracted system (like the match-3 game in puzzle quest for an extreme example) that doesn't have much to do with fighting. I wouldn't want to play adventure mode if it were like that. This is related to the issue of player vs. character skill, though they are different problems. Anyway, it's not as if the fighting has been strictly attack trading up until this point -- you could wind up on the ground if you screwed up a charge etc., and I prefer to have that sort of motion going on. Adding more options will only make the fights more dynamic, and that was the whole purpose of reaction moments, but that's a really local mechanic time-wise. We lack some overall structure and some mechanics to force a bit of patience. Fatigue is probably the closest thing we've got for that, and through the years various things like being off-balance and so on have come up, but it needs to be placed in a framework that doesn't just make it like an opportunity strike. This is somewhat difficult, since there's a huge psychological aspect to fighting that isn't in the game at all (for example, learning your opponent's habits). If that's the "puzzle" that's supposed to be solved, it has to be done in a way that doesn't make the game completely annoying. If it happens in such a way that your options improve or degrade based on who's the better fighter, over time, as your character feels people out, it might be better, but that isn't much different from waiting for a ! to show up, it just takes a little longer, but that could be all the difference that is necessary to have a "cool fight" worthy of a legend. We'll have to see.
I don't have much to say about multiple attacks or how penalties for that would work. It's pretty complicated in the end. Certain things would be easy and effective (say, if you had needles you wanted to poison people with, or light sabers or something), and certain things would be wantonly silly, like a punch+kick maybe. I haven't really addressed this in any satisfactory way, and I'll probably be walking a fairly idiotic line until I actually focus in on combat a bit.
Will dwarf mode start scenarios include the ability to embark from your old fort, bringing a selection of animals and dwarves and retiring the old fort instead of being forced to abandoning it to start a new one? Or will that come later?
I'm not sure what the first push on dwarf mode start scenarios will entail. Any start scenario that involves historical figures would involve your old inhabited forts in the list of candidates by default, so your forts will be involved to the extent that any world gen fort is involved. Now that fortress retirement is in, your forts really are like other sites in pretty much every way (they just have some inconveniences related to the fact they they aren't generated but instead live on the disk, but that shouldn't impact historical figures at all).
Does "post-adventure time-skip" refer to an automatic skip forward in time? Or is it an option to manually advance time in years (like a manually-activated world-gen continuation of history)? Because the latter sounds interesting, especially if it also allows time-skipping after abandoning (or retiring) a fortress.
In the current version, there's something like a two week skip for a new adventurer and a skip to the next spring for a fortress. The ramifications for such a thing vs. the new active-world mechanics have not been addressed, and I'm not sure what'll end up replacing the time-skip if anything.
What level of interaction do you see the gods having on the world when they are done? Will it ever reach levels of interaction compared to the Greek gods or the Jewish God where their interactions can bring about huge historical changes in a world?
Will the fleshing out of divine interaction provide us with an option set at world-gen, much the way 'Mineral Frequency' or 'Megabeast Frequency' is handled currently? This would allow us to set up worlds with different flavors in regards to the god question.
Yeah, I think there are some power goals with divine intervention and so on (no doubt they were goofy), and I'm for having worlds that have set-ups like this, with all kinds of different levels of involvement and multiple simultaneous physical forms and whatever strangeness. I've seen setting up the creation stories as one of those places where we might start seeing Armok 1's planned world gen parameters for high-magic/low-magic settings and so on, but it's far enough out in the future that I have no idea how it'll play out. As with the curse etc. parameters, I fully expect any god/magic stuff to be removable or amplifiable in the parameters, and that's how I want to set it up.
Speaking of world gen parameters, will we ever be able to set them to be completely randomized, as opposed to specific numbers or even weighted numbers? Random mineral scarcity, werebeast types, max cavern passage density, etc?
It would still need to be governed in some way, I think, to avoid having a reject-heavy random parameter set. There's room for randomization, especially with the kinds of reject-independent parameters you mentioned, but it can't be everywhere.
Does the new succession system include the succession of bandit leader positions as well?
Yeah, it all works the same way, though it might be a little weird with groups that only have a few people.
Will religious organizations carry out goals like other entities?
What sorts of goals are religious figures going to have for adventurers? Will their religious spheres influence their desires? Will demon pretenders have goals beyond those of a cruel but otherwise normal ruler? Can an adventurer spread his religion?
They are still utterly uninteresting at this point, and I'm not sure how they will be realized. We've posted lots of goals in the past, but it is all pretty much off in the future rather than on the plate for a near-term release.
With the recent news in mind: are there going to be situations in which an otherwise hereditary or upon-death post is succeeded to, but the previous owner doesn't die and wasn't conquered- ie they were pressured into resigning or were kicked out by a bigwig?
I haven't done that within a single entity at this point. It's certainly a reasonable enough thing to have happen, and it's important for lots of different stories, but for now I've just got one entity causing another to become less powerful.
Will we be seeing monster hunters in the next release?
They have always been there, but they don't hunt monsters post-world-gen any more than they did before. You are still their best hope of getting another chance at their profession. Setting single civilized creatures like monster hunters loose will be a fun future moment, but it isn't for this release.
Toady will ruins be associated with the civilisation or will it be more neutral so that, for example, a completely different entity could do something with it?
Such as other civilisations, creatures, or non-civilised sapient beings
They know which civ made the buildings there, and depending on how the site was lost, there can be an entity site claim on the site, but there's nothing that excludes other entities except for their natural proclivities. I haven't done post-world-gen reclaims yet, but right now there are those old tags that might stop humans from saying "hey, let's go live in that old dwarf fort!". At the same time, there can be cross-site conquests in world gen, but that doesn't involve displacing entire populations. I'd certainly like megabeasts and bandits and so on to take shelter wherever, and have humans from a different civ reclaim another human ruin say, but having races reclaim different races' sites shouldn't be common. Having dwarves decide to live in the forest for no reason would be bad, unless they have absolutely no other options... and even then... death first! Maybe.
Can we jump down onto baddies, knocking them down and stabbing them at the same time or similar things?
I don't remember how falling down on people works currently, but I don't think that part has changed. There's the new jump command, but it really just turns you into a projectile that knows how to land correctly. I haven't gotten back to the part where moves and attacks are combined now that the split has happened. I'm not sure what'll be done exactly when that rolls back around.
Somehow, I have gotten the impression that the goblins will only be occupying human sites in the upcoming version. Is this correct, or can the sites of every major race get occupied by goblins? Does this include the sites of other goblin civs? If a player-made fortress succumbs to dwarf mode invasion or gets occupied post-retirement, will we be able to send an adventurer there to start a rebellion? Will it be possible to re-activate (without a reclaim party) a fortress that was liberated in adventure mode?
I've been testing human sites since I haven't finished all of the stuff I want to do with the other sites, but I don't think there will be any restrictions. In this pre-army fighting release, it is a little weird to just hand them dwarf fortresses, since that would include your retired forts, which is strange, since player fortresses are reasonably easy to defend when prepared by an experienced player. If your fort can be captured, then you should be able to unretire it if you liberate it, yeah. I haven't handled dwarf-mode invasions as occupations though -- they still kill everybody, and you don't have a way to succumb to an occupation.
Can you tell us what dialogue is going to be like in the updated adventure mode? Are there going to be dialogue options like "Ask about..." "Offer..."? Or maybe generated dialogue trees (Name/Job/Bye)?
How is reputation going to be handled for the different adventurer roles? If I'm a famous trader and offer my services to a noble, I wouldn't want to receive a kill monster quest as if I were known for being a hero type. What if I have conflicting reputations, like being a famous monster slayer and a wanted thief?
There are options for bringing up rumors/incidents and so on, and these go to separate option lists. Many of the old options are still there and work like before, but I've still got a few of those to cannabilize. I'm not going for a full rewrite though. Doing things like asking where a store is are not part of this, but you might be able to ask where a town is that has been invaded. I still haven't dealt with some of the main issues with the current conversation engine and that's not in the cards for this time.
I'm not sure how the reputation will be handled. I've removed the "hero" hf-entity link and merged it with the vampire etc. information from world gen, so there's this overall entity reputation that has lots of different variables. It hasn't gotten to the point where that matters yet though, and I'm not sure how it'll play out. At least it's already in a place where you certainly won't be getting "heroic" fame as a trader, once you can get fame as a trader, so it should be neat once more roles go in.
Does insurrection only work for goblins, or can we also stir up a rebellion against vampire leaders / false gods who lay oppressive edicts?
Here's a paraphrase of a reply I sent to somebody who asked something similar elsewhere: "It depends partially on town guards or how those soldiers in the castles are stored. I haven't changed it yet, and what it would need is the oppressive laws historical event to split the entity populations up so that there can be some guards that identify more with the kingdom than their own cultural identity. This isn't really a hard change, so I've got a note about addressing it, but there's a chance it won't work out, or that it won't fit to use occupying army mechanics for regular town guards. A vampire ruler having people dragged off as blood chattel isn't all that different from being ruled by the goblins, so I'm hopeful for the moment, anyway. A key difference is that your example uses rulership of the existing entity rather than the old entity being displaced by a new entity, so it's not the same exact mechanism to get a new group in power."
Toady, will NPCs always interrupt a conversation when faced with danger, since it takes up a turn of their time, or will we explicitly be able to have a civilized chat with our companions whilst hacking bandits to bits?
Right now it doesn't account for such free-spirited banter, so you'll just be ignored by them. It doesn't necessarily waste a turn though, since we can do lots of simultaneous actions now, so it won't be bad if they can do it at some point.
Will we ever be able to taunt/demoralize opponents in such a way that it might cause some form of penalty for them to perform actions?
It would be funny. Nothing like that for this time.
Will we be seeing a change to how companions are recruited with the new conversation system? Specifically will it become more context based?
Yeah -- this question was posted a few hours before the dev logs on insurrections and getting people to go along with you for a period of time and agreements and all that, so we'll go with those dev logs for the answer.
In the event of an ambush could we call our soldiers to us as to not be so scattered? and in such a scenario how likely are they to route?
I haven't done anything tactical yet. The main issue as things stand now is probably stealth vs. your companions being idiots, since it sort of invalidates the whole new stealth system.
At some point, will we be able to have a big bag (or mule, or other storage system) and just tell our buddies to take what they want/need?
I'm not sure how equipment for companions will work out. I don't think it'd be good to have to micro-manage all of your companions' stuff, since it makes them like play toys and I don't think they'd appreciate it, but I haven't set anything up yet. If we ever do that "create and play a party" feature, you'd probably have an option to micromanage things. All that said, if the first equipment related command is to hand somebody a single item, I wouldn't be surprised, and that's slow-motion micromanagement, if the items are accepted.
Are there plans for civilizations to randomly have religious prohibitions against eating or drinking certain things?
I don't have any particular plans, but I think there were some bloats or power goals from the old pages tangentially related to that stuff. We're all for that kind of modeling, but I'm not sure when we'll get to look at stuff like that.
Which of the changes in this upcoming release, if any, will percolate into Legends mode, and in what ways? In other words, how will Legends mode change?
There are a number of new historical events that get logged during play, there are some new goings-on in world gen, and it has a new relationship for traveling companions that is listed, but I haven't changed the overall mode in any significant way that I recall.
have you done something regarding soldiers eating and drinking while on duty and not storing their food to root in chests on their barracks?
I haven't done anything with that. In general, stuff that looks more like bugs just hasn't been addressed. There will be lots of bug-fixing, old and new, after the release, as before.
So how will the BAC check for companion loyalty work?
That was just a joke about the ridiculousness of the current situation. I haven't done anything with drunkenness yet. They are still permanent drunks and cannot awaken from their nightmare stupor. It should be way more interesting when alcohol actually does something.
With different factions starting thier own wars and such, and individual dwarves being tied to their fations apart from other dwarves, will we ever see something such as a civil war happen in a fort? Such as friendly migrants coming in, and then when a war breaks out, will they have to choose between their former loyalties or their new ones?
Ideally things like that'll come up, but not for this release, unless something goes horribly wrong like before.
Will we still get wandering adventurers whose only goals in life are to follow you around and kill things that attack you, with the new agreement system?
Yeah, those people all hang out at the fake taverns now, and the same conditions apply for them. I'm not sure that'll always be the case, but it's still the case now.
On agreements, will our adventurers' fame and social skills still determine how well they can get people to follow them?
It works the old way for the regular tavern dwelling people during normal times, but insurrection agreements are currently independent of a lot of social factors. It would make sense later on to force some more work to go into gathering people, but this is a more basic release than that, and the conversation engine is not the focus of the rewrites I'm doing, even though I had to put some work into it. In particular, it's still quite unclear how conversation skills are going to be used in adventure mode, either by you or against you or in any way at all.
Will the results of the decisions the entity make related to the death of an overlord lead to an variable outcome?
For example, the death of the overlord could trigger a new overlord chosen from inside the invading force if there is another historical member with a claim near it, or the abandonment of the conquered village if there isn't.
This way, we couldn't be sure if killing the overlord would always result in the liberation of the site, though it would be likely.
I'd wanted to get to that, but I'm cutting all the corners I can now. I think it'll probably be one outcome for now, and once I can get a messenger sent or a competent subordinate to take over the responsibilities, it can start to look at the insurrection in a more practical way. It'll be looking at some other variables now to get the gobs to leave, but the messiness of the overlord situation will see that way always work at this point, I think. After a bloody explosion in the central tower of the castle, having the subordinate rise up is sort of tricky to handle, since you kind of have to leave first -- any situation where the units are still loaded is a mess right now, since you don't yet get to witness all of the intricacies of political decision-making. It has to happen off-screen or at least telepathically, until I get to that stuff.
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Topic: Future of the Fortress (Read 3851232 times)