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[thvaz]

Putnam: Well, the devlog does talk Toady doing his best to limit the numbers of historical figures, so yes, even if it probably doesn't have any effect on performance, there's still something to be said for intensive exploration that leads to a huge rise in historical figures that leads to much more memory hogging. And the raw number of 3 GB or the data on worldgen isn't really useful here, since we're talking about the stuff the game has to add after we begin playing it.

I think historical figures impact heavily on world generation, but not so much during play. Hence the great increase in time to generate a new world in the last cycle of releases.

[Willfor]

Imagine it this way. Every week during world gen, every historical figure has to make a set of decisions about how they are going to live their life. Before DF2012 they had fewer decisions to make, and maybe longer spans of time between when they had to make these decisions. They still have to make these decisions during actual gameplay, but the speed with which you try to move through gameplay differs from the speeds you want during world gen. Even in fortress mode, the overhead from worldwide decisions wouldn't have a massive effect. However when you're trying to move through entire sets of years at a time, it can take quite a few clock cycles to move through the decisions that every active participant in the world has to go through -- even if they choose to do nothing. They have to be presented with their choices regardless.

I don't think world gen is ever going to get back to the speeds we could get through it before, and this might be a necessary evil to have worlds as complex as we're getting. But restricting the number of individuals who each would add more cycles to each year's overhead is a wise move in terms of keeping it from going into a stall.

[King Mir]

So any knowledge on how much exploration (number of cities) the game can handle, and exactly how many resources will a city eat? With the game set to become even slower as cities are explored, it might be a disincentive to explore many different civilizations in favor of staying in a few cities. And is it going to affect dwarf mode? I'm not dissatisfied with the changes, I'd just like to be aware of the dangers of starting a world for too long, or starting a fort after playing adventure mode. (In case Toady doesn't, would be nice to have some !Science! done on this after release.)

I would imagine that anything that caused the game to slowly lose FPS to be a bug. (DF has quite a few of these already)

Visiting lots of cities shouldn't be a problem, because places visited are regenerated every time they are loaded. The only thing that's saved is the results of the player's actions. The new thing is that there are now people and armies moving about, but that happens regardless of if you visit those places.

[Uristsonsonson]

Not to derail, but I've been wondering this lately... With the deep sites being closer to the HFS, how do the dwarves resist being changed by the ambient magic down there? I mean the stuff that makes the subterranean animal people hostile and creates all of those weird creatures like floating guts and hungry heads. Will they have issues with the stranger underground fauna?

[BlackFlyme]

Not to derail, but I've been wondering this lately... With the deep sites being closer to the HFS, how do the dwarves resist being changed by the ambient magic down there? I mean the stuff that makes the subterranean animal people hostile and creates all of those weird creatures like floating guts and hungry heads. Will they have issues with the stranger underground fauna?

They go deep, but I don't think they go that deep.

Pretty sure deep sites only go as deep as cavern layer one.

Besides, deep dwarves would already be adapted to subterranean life.

[Anatoli]

Imagine it this way. Every week during world gen, every historical figure has to make a set of decisions about how they are going to live their life. Before DF2012 they had fewer decisions to make, and maybe longer spans of time between when they had to make these decisions. They still have to make these decisions during actual gameplay, but the speed with which you try to move through gameplay differs from the speeds you want during world gen. Even in fortress mode, the overhead from worldwide decisions wouldn't have a massive effect. However when you're trying to move through entire sets of years at a time, it can take quite a few clock cycles to move through the decisions that every active participant in the world has to go through -- even if they choose to do nothing. They have to be presented with their choices regardless.

Sure, which explains why the already-mentioned guards aren't added as historical figures during the world generation. However, if we talk about "keep them non-historical for longer" after the world generation ends, it doesn't really address the issue. And since last I checked the world generation stopped after the game began, it isn't really relevant. Once again, I'm not saying it would have an effect on active memory, or even passive one, but I'd like to know if it does, or else there isn't any real reason to try to limit the numbers of historical figures after the world generation ends.

Visiting lots of cities shouldn't be a problem, because places visited are regenerated every time they are loaded. The only thing that's saved is the results of the player's actions. The new thing is that there are now people and armies moving about, but that happens regardless of if you visit those places.

Well, there is still the part that it has to devote at least a little of memory once you visit a city to be able to regenerate it properly. I forget how exactly Toady said it works, but there's that. And the entire elevating of random people to historical figures that happens once you visit a city, is something that has been explicitly stated in the devlog. There's quite a lot of stuff now that is elevated from abstract to specific as you play.

[King Mir]

Not to derail, but I've been wondering this lately... With the deep sites being closer to the HFS, how do the dwarves resist being changed by the ambient magic down there? I mean the stuff that makes the subterranean animal people hostile and creates all of those weird creatures like floating guts and hungry heads. Will they have issues with the stranger underground fauna?

Who says they will?

Capntastic:  So the deep down dwarves, when they come up, maybe they should just be very very allergic to the sun?
Toady:        Well they will be cave adapted.
Rainseeker: Exactly.
Capntastic:  But extremely cave adapted, have another tier.
Toady:        Maybe blind, they'll just lose their eyes.
Capntastic:  They'll be blind and they'll be completely white, you know, like those cave fish.
Toady:        Beardless, beardless, no, they'll have flesh that replaces the beard or something like these tendrils that come out..
Capntastic:  Fleshy beards?
Toady:        Translucent fleshy beards that generate light, but they don't have eyes, so it doesn't mean anything. And yeah, they have alcohol detectors in their stomachs and so on, they waddle around and roll in the mud. And yeah, so that's about like a dwarf. That's what we expect from a dwarf.
Rainseeker: Ya, that's pretty good.
Toady:        A Cthulu-esque mob that comes out of the deep.
Capntastic:  But they're friendly and they talk with a Scottish accent.
Toady:        That's right. Scottish deep spawn. It's interesting being in this position, because now we've got all kinds of choices. I'm not sure those are the choices we're going to make, but got all kinds of choices, so it should be cool.

[Willfor]

Imagine it this way. Every week during world gen, every historical figure has to make a set of decisions about how they are going to live their life. Before DF2012 they had fewer decisions to make, and maybe longer spans of time between when they had to make these decisions. They still have to make these decisions during actual gameplay, but the speed with which you try to move through gameplay differs from the speeds you want during world gen. Even in fortress mode, the overhead from worldwide decisions wouldn't have a massive effect. However when you're trying to move through entire sets of years at a time, it can take quite a few clock cycles to move through the decisions that every active participant in the world has to go through -- even if they choose to do nothing. They have to be presented with their choices regardless.

Sure, which explains why the already-mentioned guards aren't added as historical figures during the world generation. However, if we talk about "keep them non-historical for longer" after the world generation ends, it doesn't really address the issue. And since last I checked the world generation stopped after the game began, it isn't really relevant. Once again, I'm not saying it would have an effect on active memory, or even passive one, but I'd like to know if it does, or else there isn't any real reason to try to limit the numbers of historical figures after the world generation ends.

It might be that an often requested feature is the ability to restart world gen conditions after stopping it, and Toady realizes that this is something he will never be able to do if he doesn't try to keep historical figures down in the framework before attempting this down the road? Somewhat like the letting the genie out of the bottle conundrum.

[King Mir]

Imagine it this way. Every week during world gen, every historical figure has to make a set of decisions about how they are going to live their life. Before DF2012 they had fewer decisions to make, and maybe longer spans of time between when they had to make these decisions. They still have to make these decisions during actual gameplay, but the speed with which you try to move through gameplay differs from the speeds you want during world gen. Even in fortress mode, the overhead from worldwide decisions wouldn't have a massive effect. However when you're trying to move through entire sets of years at a time, it can take quite a few clock cycles to move through the decisions that every active participant in the world has to go through -- even if they choose to do nothing. They have to be presented with their choices regardless.

Sure, which explains why the already-mentioned guards aren't added as historical figures during the world generation. However, if we talk about "keep them non-historical for longer" after the world generation ends, it doesn't really address the issue. And since last I checked the world generation stopped after the game began, it isn't really relevant. Once again, I'm not saying it would have an effect on active memory, or even passive one, but I'd like to know if it does, or else there isn't any real reason to try to limit the numbers of historical figures after the world generation ends.

It might be that an often requested feature is the ability to restart world gen conditions after stopping it, and Toady realizes that this is something he will never be able to do if he doesn't try to keep historical figures down in the framework before attempting this down the road? Somewhat like the letting the genie out of the bottle conundrum.

Toady has said before (Cue Footkerchief with quotes) that restarting world gen is already impossible because of genie bottle issues. He might add the ability to do time skips, but they won't be at the speed of worldgen.

[PigtailLlama]

However, would it still be possible for historical figures to emerge from the guard through enough notable kills, turning into a vampire/werewolf, or a change in leadership?

[WillowLuman]

Do you plan to include alloys in the game? If so, how might it be handled?

[Demonic Gophers]

Do you plan to include alloys in the game? If so, how might it be handled?

...This question puzzles me.  Do you mean alloys in some figurative sense?

[WillowLuman]

Right. Brain fart. Carry on.

[LordBaal]

I think is just a post traumatic shock or withdrawal if you like, caused by the lack of release of a new version of DF.

I like to believe that after this one, the most significant release of DF, where you actually have a living world now to toy with, things will be metaphorically "downhill" for Toady One, development wise. Emphasis on metaphorically and "downhill", as I meant that this living, active world was a needed for a lot of things to be organic and logical, and others to exist at all.

No, I don't think that the programing will be easier or that the speed of development will be increased from now on, actually I think it will even harder and slower to develop or at least the same phase Toady has keep all this years.

What I mean with this is that the child will be birth, the bird will be hatched and it will finally take it's first breath of air, filling it's lungs full with life, and now all it takes for it is to keep growing and become a whole animal.

Or at least that's how I see it. Carry on.

[metime00]

When you mention village relationships, does that apply only to human villages or is it all civilized and populated sites? And if so, do all the villages act independently, or is there now a concept of nations/civs in their interactions with each other? Do the village warlords have any relationship with their lieges?