Sappho: go ahead and continue with whatever you are working on, he he he.
Thanks to mastahcheese, Putnam, Mr S, MrWiggles, Knight Otu, Footkerchief, Trif, Valtam, Maxmurder, Areyar, Cruxador, monk12 and MrWillsauce for helping out with questions this time. If you don't see an answer here, check around the area you posted and you'll probably find it addressed somewhere. I also answered some questions about pulping and attacks in these earlier posts:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=100851.msg4158881#msg4158881http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=100851.msg4163492#msg4163492http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=100851.msg4166221#msg4166221Since adventurers don't have a lot of the thoughts and preferences dwarves in Dwarf Mode have, what will happen to them once they retire into a retired fort, then that fort in reactivated? For instance, will we see adventurers gaining allegiances to gods and food preferences when they become members of the fort? If so, what would then happen to that information when the adventurer is reactivated and begins wandering the wilderness again?
I think Putnam mentioned that it generates some of these things, although I'm not 100% sure that happens for retired people or if it happens upon migration only. If you unretire such an adventurer, the latent information would just hang around, I think, but it doesn't look at it.
What's the format for passing these arguments to the variation?
Will there be any way to use a match as conditional? Example: to not try to add a tail if there's "TAIL" in the base creature.
To pass them, you send them into the variation when you apply it, like
[APPLY_CREATURE_VARIATION:MY_VARIATION:STUFF:300]
where the variation might look like
[CREATURE_VARIATION:MY_VARIATION]
[CV_NEW_TAG:SOME_TAG:!ARG1:A:B!ARG2C]
and it would be interpreted as
[CREATURE_VARIATION:MY_VARIATION]
[CV_NEW_TAG:SOME_TAG:STUFF:A:B300C]
You can add very simple conditions. For example
[CV_NEW_CTAG:1:ADD_SPEAK:CAN_SPEAK]
makes it do [CV_NEW_TAG:CAN_SPEAK] when !ARG1 is equal to ADD_SPEAK.
But it is a very simple format, and I haven't updated anything beyond this (you can't search for matches, etc.). As usual, the spirits of dead programmers are calling out for an actual scripting language or something, but it hasn't occurred.
Will world-generation errors be added back in as an available world-generation parameter?
Will there be an option to EXPLICITLY enable the reality-warping power of duped raws if/when you get around to stopping the issues with duped raws?
Since the errors are often from broken multi-step processes, it's not always that simple. I try to focus on fixing them. I haven't made any plans regarding raw duplication errors.
Will we be able to use whole trees as defenses? That is, will we be able to use a giant oak as a wall or a bridge?
Will there be stumps left behind after we cut down trees? I imagine that stumps would be kind of like boulders, blocking caravans.
Will trees have varying hardness, affecting chopping time?
A large tree functions as a wall, so that sort of thing will happen by default.
Not sure about the stumps. Stumps are cool though.
Mining time doesn't depend on much (soil vs. rock), so I'm not sure I'll be getting into much with wood chopping either.
Will the tree size directly affect the amount of resources obtainable from that tree? Ie. a large branching oak will provide way more wood than something more similar to trees currently in the game.
It should, yeah.
Will vision at night be updated with this release? I haven't read anything about it, but thought it seemed logical to update along with sneaking.
If not, when are you planning to do this? Sneaking into a camp at night is a pain right now, seeing as you can't see a campfire or anything from a distance.
I haven't gotten into it, if I remember. I don't think the list of necessary changes is that long, since we haven't done much with lighting at all... so when you say "a campfire or anything"... is there anything else? Just fires you set or something? There's the issue of enemy vision, which is completely different now.
With the combination of DF2012 animal training and active history, will our civilization be able to capture, tame, and use exotic beasties once we, the player, have provided them with the knowledge to do so?
And if the answer is yes, will they be able to use our retired fortress as an outpost for collecting exotic beasties they otherwise would not have access to?
Since sites are becoming more dynamic, along with the NPCs, will site naming ever be changed to make more sense within context of the events and people that happened there? Along that line, will sites ever be renamed by NPCs? If goblins capture a city, would its name be converted to goblin-language? It would be cool if the "Glade of Prancing" was renamed to "The Glade of Fear" after a Dragon settled there.
Active history doesn't automatically turn everything on, and I haven't changed these mechanics.
Will sliding under enemies be a combat reaction?
Can we power-slide chop at enemies legs?
There's nothing like that at this point.
Trees. Are we going to be able to carve them out as a miner would carve out stone, or would we still be limited to felling them?
I'm not sure yet.
Toady have you gave any more thought into creatures being made out of Sand, Water, or Air but who aren't weak or fragile?
Nope, I haven't thought about that any more than before.
But suppose the main structure of a limb (in a man's case, the bone) is ruined beyond all integrity so that the limb is hanging by a few muscle threads, would a sufficiently damaged limb be easier to sever by blade or even by 'pinching'?
Also, will 'colliding with an obstacle' still burst a creature apart to its component limbs, or will it also use the new system and become a gooey, unbutcherable mess -ruining many an efficient butcher's tower?
The damage system hasn't changed for how each attack works (so severing for example is the same as before), just the naming, death-condition and raising mechanics associated to the names, pretty much.
will we be able to modify the raws for trees so to make them more realistic and how close to reality (in both of height and width) the new trees are?
The raws can be modified, though I think the thread discussed whether the new trees are realistic are not. In reality, I think they should be much taller on average, but then again, the mountains should also be thousands of tiles tall by the metric I've been using, and tall trees make large single-tile creatures look goofy no matter what, so it's a mess. People should be able to change things to something they are more or less happy with, anyway.
Toady, regarding elves. Do you and Threetoe envisage that they will have physical characteristics adapted to an arboreal live-style beyond what normal humans have? Random examples of what I mean: claws to grab onto bark, ball and socket wrist joints like a gibbon, prehensile tails, whatever. Or in your minds are their adaptions to living in trees entirely the engineered or magical structures they have in the trees (like ladders, houses, sentient vines that reach down to lift them up when required, whatever)? From what I can tell their only current physical advantage over humans for living in trees is their lighter weight. Do you imagine that will change?
It's possible that there could be further physical changes, but we have so many animal people that there isn't a lot of pressure to animalify anything.
In terms of the usability of mangled bodies, does ressurection follow a different rule than raising? Or is a mangled corpse beyond being ressurected as well?
For resurrection, I think the thing should just need to actually be able to survive following its old rules, since those are the rules that it will be subject to, though I'm not sure if I ever got that far. Having a mangled head or something kills you, so those creatures shouldn't be resurrectable, once everything's okay.
Besides pulping, are we going to be able to do anything to prevent corpses in sarcophagi from raising with the regional effects?
I haven't changed anything else about it.
If there is a brain in each hydra head, which one controls the body?
As Footkerchief mentioned, having just one head is sufficient, and it doesn't matter which one. Perhaps there's some sort of invisible bureaucratic organ that handles the multiple inputs. It doesn't treat the heads as being different critters, and there's some weirdness that comes from that. The most I've done is add some tags in the code of places I noticed, but I haven't tried to address it yet. Things like ettins should definitely have multiple souls at some point, or complicated souls that are dualized in some way, so that arguments can ensue. I'm not sure about hydras. Some depictions hiss and snap between heads, some don't (by design or omission, I don't know).
Can we have attack raws now pretty please?
[ATTACK_PREPARE_AND_RECOVER:<incoming time>:<recover time>]
3:3 is a standard punch and 4:4 is a standard kick at this point, and those numbers are modified by the adjective you apply in play.
[ATTACK_FLAG_INDEPENDENT_MULTIATTACK] <- hydra head
[ATTACK_FLAG_BAD_MULTIATTACK] <- kick
That might be it? Seems a little depressing for the number of times you needed to ask. Maybe we'll think of something else.
You mentioned the lower extreme of combat states being horseplay- does this mean rough-housing is in for children/animals?
Do accidents occur, particularly with mismatched opponents (two kittens playfighting isn't so bad, a gorilla and a kitten moreso)
I added the state and rules because I thought I'd need it and I wanted to understand how it would fit in the future, but I haven't done anything cool. I still have to put accidents back in -- I disabled them when I did the move/combat split, and I'm not sure how they will return.
What are all the severity scales? For instance, you mention "Lethal without Quarter"... does that imply you have a "Lethal but Quarter Will Be Given" level? At what point would a foe realize that you've escalated from Lethal but Quarter to Lethal Without Quarter? (I assume the player will know when your enemy has escalated when they shout "NO MERCY!" at you)
You mentioned that combat state can be adjusted in the arena now. How many combat states are there? If someone punches you, how much of an escalation is it to hit them with, say, a training sword? Or the skull of a dragon you killed?
On a loosely related note, if someone attacks you with a sword and you fight back empty-handed, do you have a chance of lowering the combat state, or alternatively, scaring your attacker with this show of confidence?
Currently the levels are: horseplay, training, brawl, non-lethal, lethal and no quarter. If a person is in a lethal conflict they are in the mindset that quarter will probably be given to them and so that yielding is an option they might attempt successfully. They'll take any opportunity to kill their opponent and don't alter their attack choices, but they won't attack a yielded opponent (I don't remember if they attack unconcious opponents or just deprioritize them). The only way a yielded lethal conflict opponent realizes that you are shifting up to no quarter is if you initiate an attack on them. If they manage to block or dodge the attack, they'll jump up to no quarter and won't try to yield again, and they will ignore your attempts to yield. That last part might be up for argument, since it should depend on some factors, but that's how it works right now. Moreover, anybody in the conflict will shift up to no quarter. Due to technical constraints, that part isn't based on vision or anything -- there'd be a huge fragmentation of conflicts if it had to check everybody in relation to everybody else, but hopefully at some point I'll be able to introduce an element of confusion and uncertainty to the AI there.
The distinction between brawl and non-lethal is currently conceptualized as say, the difference between a "fun" bar-fight and a fight where people are coming just short of killing each other (perhaps some level of street crime, say). If you pounded somebody's face until they were unconscious or broke their joint, the participants in a "brawl" might be very unhappy with how far you took things. Perhaps the lines there could be guided by civ ethics, though. There's room to move. I haven't accounted at all yet for things like contests, where rules could get arbitrarily obscure.
I haven't put the "play attack" stuff back in, so escalation there aren't handled, and I haven't handled training weapons yet, and I'm not sure I will yet outside of dwarf mode. Other items will be considered a lethal escalation, and we'll have to work in escalations over time. It depends on how the later bar brawl furniture and stuff ends up working... it might be tough getting a balance there, since the escalation of breaking a chair over somebody really depends on the chair.
They don't understand not using a weapon in terms of a show of confidence, and if they are attacking you with a sword, presumably they have a reason to kill you at that point. There will definitely be some adjustments after we have some time to mess around with this.
Are you planning to make throwing less overpowered?
I'd like it to be normal, but I don't have a schedule for it. Was it Footkerchief that brought up ranged combat updates in general? That seems like a likely time.
If the combat state is at the brawl level, will an NPC surrender to another NPC if the player just stands back and doesn't get involved?
Can the player be not involved in a ongoing fight/brawl in a town that they visit, or is one side likely to view the player as an enemy?
Yeah, yielding doesn't require you to be the adversary, but aside from ceasing hostilities, NPCs don't really know how to handle anything after that.
It's actually hard right now to get sucked into the conflict -- you have to really jump in and participate to be viewed as a combatant. The trickier part will be to get them to broaden their view, rather than narrow it, as things currently stand.
Toady, have you ever considering making livestreams of your progress so far? Not necessarily of all things, since spoiling too much would be inappropriate, but there are things that I/we think deserve to be shown on video. (despite how video-unfriendly Dwarf Fortress is)
I'm not very good with video stuff, and it would be better to include audio instead of using the in-game format, I think. The Kitsap newspaper people found something that worked all right, but I don't remember what it was now.
Toady, what are your thoughts on procedurally developing knowledge ingame? (example/specification uncoloured below)
the stuff you mentioned in the df talk footkerchief brought up mentions people developing fighting techniques using experience. do you think something along the lines of "in some random fight, alice randomly grabs bobs right arm with her left - alice randomly attacks bobs right side with her right - since bob cant defend this side the blow lands to great effect - alice now uses the technique *grab arm and attack same side* as a specific martial technique and passes it down to her students" is feasible? this is just a fighting example since thats what the df talk was about there, but there are surely other possibilities for procedural generation of knowledge.
obviously this would result in worlds with longer history to be richer, with diversified cultures and short-history-worlds to lack such depth, so i dont know how much that works in your intentions(maybe you want short-history-worlds to have just as much depth).
I think it would be difficult to force everything to be built from scratch, since it's not just about longer histories being richer, but about bluntly obvious things just being missing from some worlds, which might cheapen the simulation. It really depends on the year 1 starting point: what you take as obvious or innate, and what you take as discoverable knowledge or whatever, and then for the discoverable knowledge, what the conditions are and how restrictive they are. We've only considered safe cases so far, I think -- things like martial arts/weapon styles which are more refinements of things you can already do in a basic way, and without which the worlds would still work. The current animal training system is also safe like this -- the needed domestics are free and the exotics are learned. Going beyond that would take some care and I haven't thought about it much, but to make worlds more interesting, it's all fair to consider and to try stretching a bit.
Will the combat improvements in this update include allowing flying domestic animals to fight in three dimensions/dodge upwards even when they aren't right next to a wall?
There might be some residual 2D stuff, but a lot has changed. I haven't tested this case specifically.
How will you handle telling us what's happened when reclaiming a fort? Will we have to rely on engravings, the moods and history's of the dwarfs, etc? I was espousing the idea of setting it to procedurally generated music 
. Would, once taverns get into the picture, reminiscing there-in and other opportunities we set up act as ways of learning the history we've missed? Will outstanding monsters and bandit's remain a problem?
You mean a fort that died in world gen? I haven't added additional information, and who knows what'll be in there? For your own forts I haven't really changed much yet. When I get to the resettlement/expansion stuff (which is still somehow on the table for this release), we'll see if it isn't just established civs moving around.
Will patrols loaded in the area the player is in respond to crimes occurring there at the time? Such as if the player is involved in a nice, noisy brawl with some NPC criminals or something, guards will come to break it up?
I haven't moved into petty crimes yet in terms of guard interaction, but since I'm just adding new guards, we'll see what happens. I absolutely want to avoid justice system type stuff for this release, since it has been long enough, but if they just yell something goofy that leads to an escalation/de-escalation choice that might be fine. I'm more concerned with violent uprisings at this point, and that sort of thing.
Will it eventually be possible to leave the Fortress and see it evolve/cope in hisory mode?
I think we've talked before about the obstacles to restarting world gen (if that's what you mean by history mode). The new retired forts in the next release will be like other sites now in many ways, but that's still a limited role. If you mean regular old legends mode, you'll see events pop up there as we add them in slowly.
In future, will there be some provision in the raws for the way a civilization treats members of other races who fall under its sway in the course of its military campaigns? It's just that right now I notice there seems to be a predominance of human civilizations ruled by amphibian men and suchlike - might there be some civilizations which outright cull other races, while others treat them as second-class citizens - fit to work, but never to have any real power?
Some of the entity ethics cover the extremes already, and it matters a bit. Expansions of that system should be natural as I actually add stuff.
Do you plan to allow blunt attacks to apply a shearing force in certain situations, such as hitting flesh at an angle or just simply hitting hard enough/with a small enough contact area?
What is your opinion on the casual social patterns and structures of forumites across the board? Any insightful observations you could relay to us?
I don't have specific plans for that situation. Contact area matters already, but I'm not sure when the force types would transition since I don't really know their exact definitions or any of the equations.
Regarding the second topic, I think most people participate in it more than I do, so I don't think I have any special insight. I also see a skewed sample since the moderator reports call me to the troubled places I need to go.
Toady, do you find public speaking daunting? Have you had much experience at it?
I taught for several years in different contexts, and it wasn't really a problem. This latest art panel was daunting not because of the public aspect, but because the content was foreign to me, pretty much.
Toady, can you speak a little about Scamp's diet ? Does he like dry cat food ?
He loves his dry food, but he prefers warm turkey when he can get it. He also likes milk-infused coffee products that at times end up around him. Other than that, he only drinks bottled water (or whatever you call water in those larger plastic things with handles), or tap water from really pure sources (unlike my apartment, but my parents' well water is fine).
With the new jump mechanics, will we start to see jumping elephants? Or jumping carp?
I haven't taught critters what to do with jumping yet, but when we get to that, I imagine there'll be edge cases and not-so-edge cases where things go horribly wrong and reality will need to be questioned.
Speaking of which, will we ever see days declared holidays? Like the dwarves celebrating on the anniversary of the founding, or of the day the fort defeated its first megabeast?
I remember them being in the Power Goals in some form, and I'll be happy when we finally get them.
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Topic: Future of the Fortress (Read 3837500 times)