Thanks to mastahcheese, Knight Otu, monk12, Putnam, Trif, Footkerchief, Valtam, DG, King Mir, DarkDXZ, Eric Blank, FearfulJesuit, Mr S, My Name is Immaterial, LordBaal, HugoLuman and Cruxador for helping to answer questions. As usual, if your question wasn't answered it may have been addressed by one of these forum-goers shortly after you posted it. I also removed a few out-of-place suggestion clumps.
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.
Alright, thanks. At the moment, I'm talking about campfires (Assuming camps would get campfires if you updated vision at night), and torches later on when (if?) they get added. Seeing as you don't seem to have any plans for updating lighting this release, may I ask when you think updated lighting could make it?
I have no timeline for things beyond this release. Making things like campfires and other fires visible outside the light radius would be reasonable but I haven't done it yet. I don't recall if there's a note in this release for it.
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.
I was thinking somewhat from a modder's perspective, since I'd like the granularity to make, for example, a civilization that is inherently xenophobic but merciful, so generally exiles members of other species it ends up conquering, and would certainly never accept the rulership of a member of another species, but might allow a member of another species who had earned their respect to stay. Is that sort of thing going to be possible?
Ideally every decision will be controlled by personal and civilization level ethics, etc., that fit, but that's more or less infinitely expandable. It's hard to say how far things will go, but a lot of our stories and notes require more information than we have now anyway.
Does the new combat system make multi-target melee combat situations, such as sieges often are, considerably more dangerous for the faction with fewer soldiers? For short, will sieges be harder now?
Yes, significantly so. Passive defenses aren't as effective as active defense, and active defense can be overloaded by multiple incoming attacks.
May the 'different levels of resolution' (those that take part in calculating armies' movement) be useful for calculating the whole world's events since the fortress mode seems to be similar with the highest level of resolution?
It comes up everywhere, but it can't be done often in practice -- the finer detailed maps need to be generated, and there can't be too many of them in memory at a time. The farther things are away from you, the more they wing it and are corrected a bit later.
Are we going to have guard patrols getting lost or dying off in the sewers (without player intervention), so we can come across their remains later? This sometimes happens in RPGs...
There are notes to the effect of tracking some little unfortunate stories from world gen, and the bodies from in-play army deaths etc., but there aren't any army battles off away on the map in-play yet. But yeah, it could end up around the same time as larger battlefields are produced.
Will occupier patrols follow specific routes on patrol or will they wander around town randomly?
Will civvies in an occupied town run from/avoid occuping soldiers?
I don't have specific routes at this point, but they are going from place to place so they won't zip around like bumblebees or whatever.
Refugees are still on the table, but post-occupation citizens are going to live with the presence of soldiers and whatever that means (currently, that they can continue to be at work and go the well, etc.). There are some unfriendly troubles left on the table for them as well, too, though.
Speaking of vampires; what is up with Fortress Mode automatically (and irreversibly) labeling vampire blood-drinkers as vampires? Unintentional? Either way, it takes a lot of fun out of succession fortress vampire conspiracies when you can't covertly infect a select few members of the population without immediately giving them away.
I think it is because the "vampire" status is hidden by the alternative identity held by vampire migrants, and your own citizens don't have alternative identities. What it should actually do seems like it would really depend on the specifics of how the drinking occurred, and so it is hard to address.
as a tiny sidenote, will backpacks be added to arena mode?
quivers
I haven't done this.
Will breath attacks/gaseous stuff disrupt the viewing field of creatures ?
Will Smoke, Steam, mist, evil clouds etc. also block line of sight?
The way the gas flows are set up, it's difficulty to check tiles for them quickly, so they don't matter. It might be possible with some sort of additional flag that's updated tile-wise as smoke etc. moves around, and if that's not too hard/slow to update reliably it'd work. But I haven't tried yet.
With creatures having their vision fogged, will this affect their behaviour when invading sites?
I'm not sure if the fog comes up in fortress mode... it depends on if it was tied to time of day at all. Invaders have always had extra overall path goal information to make them functional, but they might not be able to spot opponents from the maximum distance now.
Are creatures with good night vision a thing now?
There's a note for it, and it could very well end up happening. I just need to stick a number in the raws.
Will the vision arcs and night/dark impairment and all that apply to Fortress Mode? Will this mean that we are also getting light sources for this release (maybe in some crude form at least)?
Can't comment on vision arcs, but day/night cycles and light sources in Fortress Mode would be a big deal and we'd have heard.
Oh, on the other hand, will helmets and such affect the arc of sight?
Vision arcs are a bit speed intensive to get calculated (at least if you show them and want to improve on what dot product gives you), so they aren't in fort mode yet. Getting it basically right is fine with dot product, so they might end up around if it ends up being good game-wise for the fort. It might not matter much though, and might make invaders goofier.
Helmets don't matter at this point.
How does vampiric bloodsense interact with fortress mode sneaking- will a dwarf vampire always be aware of enemies trying to sneak up on him?
It should, yeah, though it doesn't identify critters so they'll be cheating if it gets too far inside their AI where the target type is known.
On creatures with multiple heads and vision:
An artist I watch has a critter where each head has its own personality and outlook on the world (decent description on that page). While likely out of scope for DF (hydras having one mind per brain rather than one mind total), I was wondering if it would be possible to specify in the RAWs different levels of vision on each head (e.g. one head can see in the dark, the others can't) and how the vision system would handle that.
I haven't set up information like that, but there are about a zillion marker in the code where it says //******ETTIN where I need to check when I decide to tackle different head personalities etc.
Has there actually been a change with the way liquid water (not water as a contaminant) boils when it gets hot enough?
Is the Arena going to have anything other than placeholder rock for material? For example, make the walls and floors out of smooth obsidian? are these things going to be made out of some "placeholder" material like rock (what rock?), grass, dirt, or sand, or will there be an option to use things in the raws? i.e. use limestone for rock, use bubble grass for grass, use fire clay for dirt, and use white sand for sand?
Is foggy weather going to appear in fortress mode in the coming release?
Have you made changes to vision underground, and if so how will that work without lighting being in the game?
I haven't changed water. You can't set specific materials at this point. There's no visible fog in fortress mode, and I'm not sure that it happens at all. It just uses the light/vision radius underground, the same as everywhere else, and light is set low.
With the new combat system in, how much will it effect how competent each creature is in combat, will it only make creatures with extra limbs or heads more powerful, or will it change creatures across the board. I ask this because I've been making a sort of VS. mode to be played in arena where you buy units and pit them against each other and I want to know how much I'm gonna need to change things to update it when the new release comes out.
Everything is going to be quite a bit different, and I'm not sure how the balance of power will change or who the next weird super creature will be.
1) Have you (or are you still thinking about or planning to change this release) the seemingly artificial age limit for dwarf marriages in fort mode? I ask because up through the 0.31 releases, dwarves in fort mode would only get married if they were less than ten years apart (yes, I did a lot of embarking starting with the initial 3D releases to test this once I identified the problem), but marriages generated during world-gen would have spouses with 20-30 year age differences.
2) I've always assumed that dwarves only getting one chance at lover/spouse was a feature and enjoyed it on that basis. Are there any plans to change their behavior in this regard based on their personality and/or the start scenario chosen/assigned (and/or any other factors that may be implemented such as religion)?
If/When adultery is put in the game, will it be controlled by an ethic option?
I'm not sure why the marriages would be using different rules. The dwarf ones probably use some ancienter code. I can't remember why the age difference restriction is there.
I just haven't done anything with dwarven or other love lives at all. I'm not sure how it'll end up. It can clearly be made much more interesting.
Are we going to see some performance upgrades with the coming release, or as the coming release is updated in short order?
Do tracks get handled as contaminants?
What kind of graphics are used for tracks and broken grass?
Performance upgrades are sporadic but they have happened. I don't have a particular schedule.
Tracks are their own thing. They go into the "spoor" event.
It doesn't show tracks until you ask it to, and then it shows black/yellow/green symbols with a dark green background to indicate prints, item impressions, broken vegetation, etc.
How much can the fog visibility be reduced? Up to the extremely dense, only being able to see 1 tile? Can one go completely blind in the fog?
It's the same as it has always been... two or three tiles? It interacts with all the other factors.
Will clothing help with hiding? A red robe on a glacier wont be the best camouflage.
Have weather and climate an influence on tracks? Like rain washing away tracks or conversely tracks in try but not particularly sandy areas staying longer?
Clothing doesn't matter yet, but I'm pretty sure there's a note/powergoal/whatever that addresses it. Not for this time. Weather can erase tracks, yeah. There's a technical limit to how long things can stay if you travel away, but that's the only way they'd be removed in the desert.
Toady, will we be able to track ourselves in adventure mode? As in backtrack to find that place in the woods where we fought those bandits and forgot to pick up our backback and put it back on?
Yeah, you can find your own tracks. They display in a different color (it assumes you can identify them, for ease of use), but it doesn't crowd them into your main trail list so you'd have to keep an eye out.
If you aim an attack at a friendly target, do they realize you are attacking them and are no longer friendly immediately, or after the attack lands, or does it depend on their observer skill? What about witnesses? What if by some fluke the target dies before the hit lands, would a witness still consider that assault?
When attacking with a ranged attack, what counts for witnessing the attack? Does the bystander need to see the you, your target, both, or either?
Yeah, right now they get that information. Eventually we'll have cause to be more picky about it, but we're more worried about people standing idiotically while you attack them. I don't recall if the event is generated on the initiation or the strike. That'll also determine how ranged attacks work. It's probably on the strike. This would give them extra information about the shooter since the incident doesn't yet have missing knowledge, but we'll get to fixing that at some point.
You've mentioned deep dwarves being different biologically then hill dwarves in the past; does this mean that dwarves will have a special 'cave adaptation' tag, the current cave adaptation tag will be expanded on, single creature entries can designate different properties depending on which biome the creature is located, or single entity entries will be able to assign different creatures according to different biomes?
I'm not sure yet.
Toady, how hard do you think it is to implement the fourth thing the in eternal suggestion voting (Full graphics support) and how high is it in your priority list?
Will we be able to use graphic sheets for plants like we can with creatures at some point?
As far as I know, implementing things like item or map tiles won't work without multiple texture atlases, or something, and I don't know how to do that in the new graphics code.
Will we see the grid that limits embark zones (one tile in the middle map on the embark screen I mean) be removed at some point? That is, will we be able to embark in between/on two "embark grids"? And will the grid (of any resolution) be less apparent in the world?
Considering the multitile tree rewrite and that we've had new grass for a while now, will we see changes to shrubs or bushes in future versions as well? As in, will some of them cover multiple tiles or change in other ways?
Have any changes been made to worldgen regarding deforesting? I'm thinking of Humans deforesting in the surrounding areas to build their towns and make space for their fields.
I'd like to allow embarks to straddle world tile lines. I haven't jumped into it since there will probably be ugly bugs that come out of doing it without care (from old fort mode code that assumes sites to be in one square). Ideally, the grid would disappear as much as it has in adventure mode travel -- and then beyond that by getting rid of the griddy artifacts that plague things like rivers.
Yeah, I suspect we'll get multitle shrubs sometime, and perhaps the distinction between a small tree and a large bush won't mean much after a while.
I haven't changed wg deforestation.
What happens regarding the new combat and yielding during fortress mode sieges? First, do the invaders yield? If so, do they then retreat? What about the dwarves -- do they yield? If so, is it a military-only yielding, or fortress-wide?
Or are invasions/ambushes no-quarter?
It's all no-quarter right now, because we haven't added anything to deal with prisoners. That doesn't mean people can't run though.
Toady, as you go back through stuff, how are you choosing which thing to work on next? Is it more stack like, or a queue, or some weird round robin thing?
There's no particular system. I try to go for things that I'm motivated to work on and that don't rely on other remaining items, just to get through it as fast as possible.
Have you done any work on Kobolds yet and what ish do you have planned for them in short?
Nah, they are the largest yawning void left, probably. Playing Kobold Quest is my only suggestion. There may be other notes elsewhere, but I'm not sure where the twists and turns will bring us.
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Topic: Future of the Fortress (Read 3836720 times)