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[LordBaal]

It's down since yesterday for me, well yesterday it was kind of random where sometimes it loaded and other times it doesn't. Today is as death as Chavez.

[Footkerchief]

Are we going to see a return of the economy some day? If so how do you think it would be managed?
[craziness]I know this is more a suggestion, but the way I see it a fortress is well a fortress, a military thing where is okay to order everyone around, but after a while, if it becomes a mountain home or a "city" A reduced control over the civilian activity could work, where you designate workspaces, rooms and dig-able areas where the civilians can go around their businesses, make the workshops they want, work in whatever they want and pay you taxes over it, then those taxes could be used to pay salaries and equipment of state miners/soldiers/public workers/bureaucrats, and fund government/military constructions like walls, fortifications, siege equipment and other things.[/craziness]

Its going to return sometime, but is there any indication of how many releases it will take before that get worked on, even as guesstimate given the state of things now? At the moment the original release schedule has been totally changed, so we've got world activation and sites have been restored and are present. I can see that taverns will be a thing in the very near future, possibly next major release or alternatively as a minor release after the big one comes.

Yeah, it'll happen when taverns happen, as discussed in DF Talk #12:

Toady:   I think adventure mode is going to have ... it's mostly going to be locals and people visiting for market days, as well as some travellers and people hanging out that you can perhaps hire. Whereas dwarf mode it's going to be more particular for dwarf mode at first, especially when you've got diplomats and merchants showing up as they do now. If they're going to stay for a while then they might need to eat and drink so you'll have to take care of them a little bit, and if they're going to stay a while - I mean how often do dwarves sleep - if they're going to stay a whole season you might need to put them up in a room. But there will be locals there. It depends on how soon we get back to a local economy inside the fortress, but it's basically making meeting halls more interesting for your dwarves at the very start, with the dwarves going in and instead of just claiming a room for parties or going on a break and just hanging out doing absolutely nothing they can take you up on the amenities you set up for them in your meeting halls, or dining room. It's kind of like a meeting hall and a dining room, those things might all get mushed together, and you'll have your dwarves go there, they'll be able to drink and play with little games and use their musical instruments ...

[...]

Capntastic:   What sort of things will you be able to place, like amenities wise, and how much will dwarves care if the inn is not well stocked, what penalties could that incur.
Toady:   I don't even know if ... Tavern-wise, it's not like your own dwarves are going to stay at your inn, that'd be kind of cruel wouldn't it, if the seven dwarves arrive and they make an inn and then they have to stay at their own inn, but for your dwarves it's basically the same as it is now, they just need to be supported drink wise, they need to have good food, and they need to chat with their friends to bolster them up a bit, and if there's specific pleasures that come out of playing music and listening to people tell stories and that kind of thing - I don't know about dwarven dancing - and then playing with different types of games, which we'll talk about in a bit I'm sure. Those kinds of things for dwarves, it's really just an extension of the current mechanics and getting them to ... Right now if they go to a party, if they're talking to people and making friends that makes them happy but the party should be really more of a release than that for the dwarves, especially if they've got a lot of their minds that they need to have cancelled out, then they should have lots of different funny specific happy things to do there. So that kind of thing for them in particular, just dwarves from your fortress coming in, it's really just going to be an activation of music and like I said story telling. I don't know if there's going to be a particular service industry, like people serving drinks to your own dwarves, if they just go to the stockpile and grab some stuff, they don't pay for it or anything, just hang out and it's just an extension of the meeting hall/dining hall concept for them. Where it gets more interesting is when you involve people that aren't economically a part of your fortress, then you've got people that you'll actually be able to charge for drinks, charge for staying, if you want to: it might not be something you want to do to a diplomat, but it might the dwarven way of doing things. I haven't quite decided about that particular one. But you've also got merchants coming in, and depending on the location of your fortress you might also have travellers showing up or bandits showing up. There's nothing that says that the bandits don't hang out at a dwarven tavern and then move on, because there's plenty of them just lingering around, and also if you build your fortress out in the wilds they're more likely to be the closest people. This might be the time when we start making adventurer type people and mercenary type people move around a little bit and in that case you'd have some additional visitors there as well. I know in the first release which is going to predate the tavern release there's going to be people moving between towns and villages, going to markets and so on, and depending on the location of your fortress you could bump into some people's associated movements like that, although jamming your fortress in between the villages and towns ... that's a little tight. It'd be kind of funny, but it's a strange location for a dwarf fortress.

[...]

Toady:   So you'd have this hub where you'd set up your services and link up rooms, it would probably just use regular bedrooms, so we don't have to change it that much for your inn rooms, and link them up to the main meeting all, and at the meeting hall you'd also be able to set up your prices and specifically what things you want going on at your inn, and perhaps you'd also - like with the workshop profiles - be able to attach the particular people you want to hang out there. So basically we wanted to set up the hub in those buildings and not deviate too much from what we've got now. There's obviously going to have to be a new kind of screen or options menu for the new stuff but it should all come right off of that screen. When you get into this economic stuff there's also this desire to jump into, 'I want my guest list with their winnings tab and how many drinks they've bought' and if for some reason you set up two inns you could have charts saying how well they're doing. I don't know how much we want to jump into Theme Park type of stuff, but it's reasonable ... Like, if you decide to start your fortress and you just set up this giant gambling hall and you attach some stockpiles filled with all kinds of stuff that's brought in and it becomes a big part of your fortress and basically booze is your main export straight to people into their stomachs and then they export it out of their bodies when they walk off the map or whatever, and that's your main source of income, then it would be reasonable to have tracking information for that kind of thing. But if it's just a small little place you use to make your diplomats and merchants more happy and more likely to have good trade agreements and that kind of thing then it doesn't need to be something that's in your face all the time. We're certainly not planning to have it at the end of the year pop up your earnings; that's not what we're going for, I don't want to scare people into thinking we're doing something completely off base and stupid with the game.

Given that big releases are always followed by upheaval and reshuffling of dev priorities, it's hard to say when that'll be.  Some older quotes on the economy:

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=60554.msg1457383;topicseen#msg1457383

I mean market economics. Supply and demand.

As an example, currently if you build only luxurious bedrooms, the poor dwarves don't get to use them at all yet most bedrooms will stay empty. That's of course not realistic; the price will be what the market can bear, and no more - basically, the dwarves should bid on bedrooms.

(As an aside, "and no more" only applies where there are no ongoing maintenance costs, but since such things aren't in the game yet.. well, if the market couldn't bear the maintenance they'd go derelict, not just stay empty.)

Of course, bedrooms are just the most obvious example. This applies to everything that enters the economy, including money itself; minting more (without a corresponding increase in economic size) should cause inflation, minting too little deflation - and as real life shows, both can be very bad things (though especially deflation). Insufficient money would cause the economy to not work properly, too much.. well, that depends on how, exactly, the new money is distributed.

I can think of plausible exceptions to the economy, like nobles not wanting the rabble to have rooms as good as they do, but they should be exceptions - not the rule. Which is to say, first make the market economy work, then consider noble/personality-driven exceptions.

Will dwarves, other than nobles*, get mood-thoughts from encountering dwarves at different relative wealth. Such as a poor dwarf seeing a rich dwarf. Would that depress or inspire? Instill envy? Can dwarves sense the magnitude of wealth difference?

Yeah, supply and demand are up for the trader role, and they'll start once we have the amount of things counted up on sites and the availability established through trade connections.  Demand is a bit trickier, but it'll be more clear once the resources are in use.  That will propogate over to your fortress vs. the caravans.  The specific elements of the dwarven economy that exist more in isolation could be handled once that's up, but I'm not sure which of them will survive.  The introduction of sprawl around the fort could change the rental situation drastically, but the overall price setting would apply there, assuming rooms in your fortress aren't so rare and the outside population so vast that they aren't all the exceptions you mentioned.  It's hard to say how it'll turn out.

As for the reactions of one dwarf to another, part of the problem has been that the personality system we are using doesn't really lend itself to questions like this.  It is a very non-judgmental system.  We're working out some changes to it that'll work for villains and also apply in situations like this, where a dwarf might be given to envious thoughts, for instance, though it's a special case and there are going to be a lot of avenues that open up once we have the new information.  I'll have to be careful with the distributions here to stop all of your dwarves from being deeply, deeply flawed, beyond what you might expect from dwarves.

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=60554.msg2154630;topicseen#msg2154630

Are there any plans for an in-fortress economy in the near future (I mean as part of the next few updates)? It's not specifically mentioned on the list but seeing as this is the "caravan arc", i though might be hidden under a larger goal.

When we get to taverns and inns, we'll see what comes up.  That would be a time to try something, but I'm going to stay focused on the stated goals as best as I can.  Which isn't saying much, I guess, he he he.

[CaptainArchmage]

Well the site is fixed now for me.

If taverns are going in the next big release, that means we can expect to have the economy up then. It may be bugged. If its going to be done in a lot of smaller releases*, which I think would be preferable, it may go in before taverns.

One of the big advantages to having some kind of economy is it would allow us to build stores when expanding the fortress.

An example of a small short-term release was the addition of minecarts to Dwarf Fortress.

*Kerbal Space Program is shifting from doing big releases to doing more smaller releases over a shorter period of time. I don't know how feasible this is for dwarf fortress but KSP changed some of its version management tools, which allowed them to do the smaller releases without messing up the development.

[qav1]

Well the site is fixed now for me.

If taverns are going in the next big release, that means we can expect to have the economy up then. It may be bugged. If its going to be done in a lot of smaller releases*, which I think would be preferable, it may go in before taverns.

One of the big advantages to having some kind of economy is it would allow us to build stores when expanding the fortress.

An example of a small short-term release was the addition of minecarts to Dwarf Fortress.

*Kerbal Space Program is shifting from doing big releases to doing more smaller releases over a shorter period of time. I don't know how feasible this is for dwarf fortress but KSP changed some of its version management tools, which allowed them to do the smaller releases without messing up the development.

Smaller updates is better for me, that way I can get 25 days of entertainment of dorfs being flung at goblins and megabeasts instead of 1 day per update

[CaptainArchmage]

Smaller updates is better for me, that way I can get 25 days of entertainment of dorfs being flung at goblins and megabeasts instead of 1 day per update

This. I think having smaller updates with the same aims would really help with things. If we had, for example, elf sites released in October or November or whenever they were done, we'd have a hands-on example of how the multi-tile trees were doing. It would save a lot of the massive clean-up that happens before the big releases and I'd strongly recommend it.

[Caldfir]

The objective of "more smaller releases releases" has been a stated goal several times in recent history.  While sometimes this is effective, sometimes it simply isn't feasible, and it's not at all clear to me that it is actually "better", despite the fact that "more frequent releases" sounds better.

A longer release schedule means that various community games and mods have a chance to update and standardize.  I have also found that I only really bother playing a new fort when I know that a new DF version is a long way off, since I know I will have time to complete the fort to my satisfaction before there are new features to tempt me away from it. 

I'd say that probably the optimal release time would probably actually be somewhere around maybe 6 months, plus however much time it takes to get the minor bugfix releases out.  Anything less than 3 months and I know I would personally spend all my time on the forums "waiting for the next release" rather than actually playing. 

[Trif]

Smaller updates is better for me, that way I can get 25 days of entertainment of dorfs being flung at goblins and megabeasts instead of 1 day per update

This. I think having smaller updates with the same aims would really help with things. If we had, for example, elf sites released in October or November or whenever they were done, we'd have a hands-on example of how the multi-tile trees were doing. It would save a lot of the massive clean-up that happens before the big releases and I'd strongly recommend it.

The problem with this particular example is that the release had a lot of open ends when the elf sites were done. Goblin sites were unfinished because Toady needed some elements from the dwarf sites, and the whole army interaction wasn't done - which was the reason why non-human sites were tackled in the first place. Development isn't always a linear process. Toady talked about it in the latest DF talk.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Toady One: [...] we started back with non-lethal combat and bandits harassing people in town, right, and then we moved on, we added tracking, and we have armies moving around and then we went over to the sites, because we needed the sites to be added in and then the original point of the thing was to get some of this birth stuff succession stuff going on, which is what I'm right in the middle of now. So we're finally touching upon that but there were points, like with the army part, I needed the sites to get that done to my satisfaction and now that I've done a lot with the sites, I can go back and do the army stuff that I didn't finish. So there's going to be a lot of, now, revisiting of the old topics that were set up for this release. I don't think we've had any really terrible feature creep this time, it's not like one of the other releases that had nothing to do with night creatures and then ended up being three or four months worth of work on night creatures, right, so this has all been very topical. But we have to go back and revisit a lot of things now because we have been kind of skipping from point to point as we need things, because none of these things, the features that we've added in could really be done in isolation. They could be done up to a certain point in isolation, then you need to work on another one, and now we need to come back and link them all together again and clean up some unfinished business. So it'll be a little while yet, it's not like when I finish succession it's like Boom! release, that's not how it's going to be, I have to go back and clean some stuff up. That's kind of normal though, I always have to go back and fix stuff up.

And by the way, we had a small release last year. v0.34.08 introduced minecarts and the hauling changes. It was done in one and a half months.

[monk12]

Not to mention that elf sites also required the running and jumping and climbing necessary to navigate elf sites.

The Toad is on record as in favor of shorter release intervals, but sometimes a feature is interwoven with many other features, and sometimes Toady adds things just to make the release fun instead of "well it's the exact same game but with bigger trees." As long as we stay away from post-40d times, I'm perfectly content.

[ravaught]

I know that this has been an ongoing subject in the forums, and that a lot of talk has gone into it, but when(if ever) can we expect to see some updates to the UI?

As more and more features get added into the game, and the overall complexity increases, the need for an improved UI increases. If Toady doesn't want to make the UI's himself, then can we at least get hooks into the UI so that outside devs can create their own? The inclusion of a html/XML parser would be relatively minor in the grand scheme of things and would allow for a lot more flexibility for players and devs that are not satisfied with the current state of the UI. Setting up defaults and overrides is not that terribly complicated.

[Manveru Taurënér]

I know that this has been an ongoing subject in the forums, and that a lot of talk has gone into it, but when(if ever) can we expect to see some updates to the UI?

As more and more features get added into the game, and the overall complexity increases, the need for an improved UI increases. If Toady doesn't want to make the UI's himself, then can we at least get hooks into the UI so that outside devs can create their own? The inclusion of a html/XML parser would be relatively minor in the grand scheme of things and would allow for a lot more flexibility for players and devs that are not satisfied with the current state of the UI. Setting up defaults and overrides is not that terribly complicated.

I'm sure someone will dig up various quotes giving Toady's previous answers to this briefly, but apart from that, I think it's a bit unfair to act as if there's never any work done on the UI. There's been tweaks and improvements to it most of the previous few releases such as being able to quickly assign dwarves into military squads, splitting up certain information windows into tabs and other small tweaks here and there. From what he's said previously he'll probably keep doing it this way, adding where appropriate and making small improvements over time to keep up with the new additions, and hopefully at some point get into a possessed mood to fix the proffession assignment menu. It's workable as it is so I don't really see any big rush to fix it right now ^^

[Inarius]

One update a year is fine for me.
I think it's easier like this. Every 3 months or 6 months mean more time to debug the game, and less to create new features; because he will take more time to make the game actually playable. I think it's easier to fix all the bugs in a few weeks, ONCE a year, than do it every months to make a new version playable.

[zwei]

One update a year is fine for me.
I think it's easier like this. Every 3 months or 6 months mean more time to debug the game, and less to create new features; because he will take more time to make the game actually playable. I think it's easier to fix all the bugs in a few weeks, ONCE a year, than do it every months to make a new version playable.

Fixing bug in something that you coded year ago is much harder and time consumingb that fixing bugs you made three months ago.

You have to fix them anyway and the earlier bug is found, the easier and faster it is to fix.

Not to mention that if source of bug is wrong approach or code pattern, it saves time rewriting anything that made use of it in subsequent development.

[Trif]

I know that this has been an ongoing subject in the forums, and that a lot of talk has gone into it, but when(if ever) can we expect to see some updates to the UI?

As more and more features get added into the game, and the overall complexity increases, the need for an improved UI increases. If Toady doesn't want to make the UI's himself, then can we at least get hooks into the UI so that outside devs can create their own? The inclusion of a html/XML parser would be relatively minor in the grand scheme of things and would allow for a lot more flexibility for players and devs that are not satisfied with the current state of the UI. Setting up defaults and overrides is not that terribly complicated.

The last UI updates were the split unit screen in 0.34.01, the stone tabs in 0.34.03, the squad assignments (and nicknames) in 0.34.08 and the resizable unit, stocks, world gen and embark screens in 0.34.10.

But like for all features, there is no timeline for UI updates.

The parser you mentioned comes up frequently as a suggestion as well (some call it a third party interface or API). There was a lengthy discussion thread a few years ago, and Toady wrote a detailed response why he's against it. And here's some more explanation a bit later.

[LordBaal]

The objective of "more smaller releases releases" has been a stated goal several times in recent history.  While sometimes this is effective, sometimes it simply isn't feasible, and it's not at all clear to me that it is actually "better", despite the fact that "more frequent releases" sounds better.

A longer release schedule means that various community games and mods have a chance to update and standardize.  I have also found that I only really bother playing a new fort when I know that a new DF version is a long way off, since I know I will have time to complete the fort to my satisfaction before there are new features to tempt me away from it. 

I'd say that probably the optimal release time would probably actually be somewhere around maybe 6 months, plus however much time it takes to get the minor bugfix releases out.  Anything less than 3 months and I know I would personally spend all my time on the forums "waiting for the next release" rather than actually playing.

This. Also this long development times take out the save game compatibility issues that might bother The Toad.

[eux0r]

i found the devlog a la "i was taking a peaceful walk in the park, when suddenly... relatives!" amusing.
toady, your devlog from 2013/03/07 makes me believe dodging is now an active(read: player controlled) action instead of something automatic, is this true? can you give us some details on how this will work? are there other mechanics players will have more control over themselves with the next release?

/unrelated
-i have strong incentive to believe, that toady knows what he is doing. people trying to tell him what to do probably just waste their and his time.
-i can barely read anything written in green when reading from my mobile phone: people, use _limegreen_ how you are supposed to, at least read the OP of a thread before responding please, show some common sense.

edit: typos, as always... >.>