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[Footkerchief]

I note that the current curses and effects seem to be hardcoded into the game. Is there any reason for this, or have they simply yet to be pushed to occupying the raw files, pending being further expanded upon?

As far as I understand it, it's because the current interactions are basically kludgy.  Toady put in hard-coded effects as (yet another) placeholder to just get things released, and will put it down as another "when he has time for it" thing to actually make the system robust enough to make modding and procedural generation possible.

It's not so much that the current interactions are kludgy/placeholders per se.  It's more that the range of randomized possibilities is hard to express in a raws-like syntax, even though the final outputs of the process are raws-like.  Stuff like:
- what weaknesses a vampire has
- what creature is used for a were-curse
- what body parts, special abilities and description modifiers are applied to a forgotten beast

[zwei]

"when he has time for it"

Well, I hope that when he has time for that, he would also have time to add some hardcoded materials (like glass), reactions and workshops too.

[Rockphed]

I note that the current curses and effects seem to be hardcoded into the game. Is there any reason for this, or have they simply yet to be pushed to occupying the raw files, pending being further expanded upon?

As far as I understand it, it's because the current interactions are basically kludgy.  Toady put in hard-coded effects as (yet another) placeholder to just get things released, and will put it down as another "when he has time for it" thing to actually make the system robust enough to make modding and procedural generation possible.

It's not so much that the current interactions are kludgy/placeholders per se.  It's more that the range of randomized possibilities is hard to express in a raws-like syntax, even though the final outputs of the process are raws-like.  Stuff like:
- what weaknesses a vampire has
- what creature is used for a were-curse
- what body parts, special abilities and description modifiers are applied to a forgotten beast

In other words, the current randomly generated curses and interactions use data that is really hard to put in the RAWs.  But if you wanted to, you could create your own curses and interactions and turn off the randomly generated ones.

[eux0r]

Are there any kinds of interactions that can stem from using an item in another predefined way?(stupid example: a crossbow using the "shouting"-thing merchants do to say "whrrr" whenever it fires a bolt)
Also: what are your "final" plans for the raws? do you want to have just one big raw-file, where everything is listed, so that every tag could theoretically be applied to every entry(example: adding a weapon-style-attack-tag to a piece of armor) or do you want to keep everything separated(so that a rock can never use a creature-tag, like defining a bodystructure or tissues)?

Does anyone here know the extend to which the interaction attached to books of the secrets of life and death work? i mean would it be possible to mod an item using a materialbreath by linking interactions starting from a book-template?

[Cruxador]

Does anyone here know the extend to which the interaction attached to books of the secrets of life and death work? i mean would it be possible to mod an item using a materialbreath by linking interactions starting from a book-template?

I'm not entirely certain what you're asking, but I'm pretty sure the answer is yes.

[Mel_Vixen]

Does anyone here know the extend to which the interaction attached to books of the secrets of life and death work? i mean would it be possible to mod an item using a materialbreath by linking interactions starting from a book-template?

I'm not entirely certain what you're asking, but I'm pretty sure the answer is yes.

The Secret of life and death contains following line:

Code: [Select]

        [IS_SECRET:SUPERNATURAL_LEARNING_POSSIBLE]    // gods
        [IS_SECRET:MUNDANE_RESEARCH_POSSIBLE]            // plain research by reading?
        [IS_SECRET:MUNDANE_TEACHING_POSSIBLE]            // Student and Master
        [IS_SECRET:MUNDANE_RECORDING_POSSIBLE:objects/text/book_instruction.txt:objects/text/secret_death.txt] // gets written down

(Comments and emphasis by me)

This gives you the ability to learn from various sources.

Thought let me get this straight you want to (for example) make a crossbow throw fireballs via a interaction? If so there is the following snippet (lifted from the fireimp):

Code: [Select]

   
 
[CAN_DO_INTERACTION:MATERIAL_EMISSION]
        [CDI:ADV_NAME:Hurl fireball]
        [CDI:USAGE_HINT:ATTACK]
        [CDI:BP_REQUIRED:BY_CATEGORY:HAND]
        [CDI:FLOW:FIREBALL]
        [CDI:TARGET:C:LINE_OF_SIGHT]
        [CDI:TARGET_RANGE:C:15]
        [CDI:MAX_TARGET_NUMBER:C:1]
        [CDI:WAIT_PERIOD:30]


I dindt see any tags thought that add these abilities to actual objects. Potions work because they are a ingested material.

[eux0r]

hm, ok, thx for the answers. thats what i feared: actually making an object use a breath is still not moddable(i want modded arquebuses to spit some smoke when firing)

[monk12]

Is there any particular reason a creature can't be subjected to multiple body transformation effects, such that the most recent would have priority?

Merely wondering if it was a conscious design decision or just a byproduct of the way the code works.

[EmeraldWind]

sterilized zombies and mummies

I hope you used enough rubbing alcohol. We can't have anyone catching an infection.

[monk12]

made ramp name indicate unusability

Eh? What makes a ramp unusable, apart from another critter on it?

Also, whoo for having all the stones on the z-stones menu!

[eux0r]

made forbid/etc. from stocks screen not effect items used for buildings when applied to an entire group

noooo! past are the days of grouping my workshops by stone-type to "de-/activate" them in groups =(

toady, is there already a feature to fix that fix in the works? i found the ability to forbid all granite-workshops at once while the chert ones still work to be really useful...

[NW_Kohaku]

It's not so much that the current interactions are kludgy/placeholders per se.  It's more that the range of randomized possibilities is hard to express in a raws-like syntax, even though the final outputs of the process are raws-like.  Stuff like:
- what weaknesses a vampire has
- what creature is used for a were-curse
- what body parts, special abilities and description modifiers are applied to a forgotten beast

That only means it's "not a placeholder" if Toady isn't intending to actually go back and make those work with the raws eventually.  As long as Toady does still intend to go back, it's a stopgap measure.

... The way in which you say that makes me wonder, however,
Toady, do you still intend to make interactions like vampirism or vampire weaknesses completely moddable at some point?  Or will things like Forgotten Beasts and general night creatures forever be hardcoded?  Is it a problem of not figuring out how to make procedurals play nice with raws, or something you want to keep?

made ramp name indicate unusability

Eh? What makes a ramp unusable, apart from another critter on it?

Not having a wall to climb up to makes it unusable.  In adventure mode, I sometimes see a line of ramps leading nowhere, especially around things like market stalls, where it looks like the land was leveled to make a wide, open area for the market, and the ramps were left behind. 

There are also things like grates being on top of ramps that prevent travel through ramps to higher elevations. 

[Footkerchief]

toady, is there already a feature to fix that fix in the works? i found the ability to forbid all granite-workshops at once while the chert ones still work to be really useful...

Your use case is the minority.  The larger concern is the many players who do that by accident.

Toady, do you still intend to make interactions like vampirism or vampire weaknesses completely moddable at some point?  Or will things like Forgotten Beasts and general night creatures forever be hardcoded?  Is it a problem of not figuring out how to make procedurals play nice with raws, or something you want to keep?

The plan is for that stuff to be in the raws eventually, but there's no timeline as usual.

link

Random creature generation is another example.  The forgotten beasts are hard-coded now, but I was considering starting with the random dragons out in the raws.  This would involve scripting again.  I don't know if this is at all similar, in terms of the concerns people are bringing up.  It seems like it's a matter of how central something is to the game.  The ability of some people to build water computers doesn't seem to bother most people, because that's sort of difficult and specialized, whereas presumably a script would be easier to use and would have more applications.

link

But more recently the thing with dragons has been the idea of doing a semi-specified random creature generator, using dragons as the prototype, and getting it all out into the raws etc.  That is, I want a generator that'll take information from the raws and produce various dragons that are all somewhat recognizable as dragons, but still different from each other.  I guess that's not too far off what has been with night creatures already now, but that doesn't have a raw format.  We'll assuredly have flying dragons and intelligent speaking dragons once that happens, but it's sort of a damper on dragons until it does.

[Caldfir]

I doubt that the randomized effects are intended to stay hardcoded forever.  I seem to remember** something in a DFtalk mentioning that there were a few things Toady hadn't RAW-ified because he wasn't sure how he wanted to do it, and didn't want to make any choices dealing with the RAWs that weren't mostly permanent, since that would bean breaking mods down the road (not to mention potentially having to redo some of his own work). 

The simplest way to go about it would be to have some meta-code flags that got read and parsed on worldgen to create the raw folder for the generated world; example:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Code: [Select]

[CREATURE:STRANGE_BIRD]
[DESCRIPTION:A strange bird.]
[NAME:strange bird:strange birds:strange bird]
[CREATURE_TILE:249][COLOR:1:0:1]
[PETVALUE:30]
{chance|50|[PET]}
{choose|2|[BIOME:GRASSLAND_TEMPERATE]|[BIOME:SAVANNA_TEMPERATE]|[BIOME:SHRUBLAND_TEMPERATE]|[BIOME:FOREST_TEMPERATE_BROADLEAF]|[BIOME:FOREST_TEMPERATE_CONIFER]}
[BODY:HUMANOID_ARMLESS:2WINGS:{choose|1|2EYES|6EYES}:2LUNGS:HEART:GUTS:ORGANS:GIZZARD:HUMANOID_JOINTS:THROAT:NECK:SPINE:BRAIN:SKULL:4TOES:{choose|1|BEAK|BILL}:TONGUE:RIBCAGE{chance|50|:2ANTLERS}]
[BODY_DETAIL_PLAN:STANDARD_MATERIALS]
[REMOVE_MATERIAL:HAIR]
[USE_MATERIAL_TEMPLATE:FEATHER:FEATHER_TEMPLATE]
[BODY_DETAIL_PLAN:STANDARD_TISSUES]
[REMOVE_TISSUE:HAIR]
[USE_TISSUE_TEMPLATE:FEATHER:FEATHER_TEMPLATE]
...
gets parsed and turned into (in some particular world)

Code: [Select]

[CREATURE:STRANGE_BIRD]
[DESCRIPTION:A strange bird.]
[NAME:strange bird:strange birds:strange bird]
[CREATURE_TILE:249][COLOR:1:0:1]
[PETVALUE:30]
[BIOME:GRASSLAND_TEMPERATE][BIOME:SAVANNA_TEMPERATE]
[BODY:HUMANOID_ARMLESS:2WINGS:6EYES:2LUNGS:HEART:GUTS:ORGANS:GIZZARD:HUMANOID_JOINTS:THROAT:NECK:SPINE:BRAIN:SKULL:4TOES:BILL:TONGUE:RIBCAGE:2ANTLERS]
[BODY_DETAIL_PLAN:STANDARD_MATERIALS]
[REMOVE_MATERIAL:HAIR]
[USE_MATERIAL_TEMPLATE:FEATHER:FEATHER_TEMPLATE]
[BODY_DETAIL_PLAN:STANDARD_TISSUES]
[REMOVE_TISSUE:HAIR]
[USE_TISSUE_TEMPLATE:FEATHER:FEATHER_TEMPLATE]
...

Which would work for a lot of stuff, but maybe not everything Toady has planned to make random.  Whatever it is, I doubt it'll be coming down the pipeline soon, but the ability to create semi-randomized creatures is something I look forward to. 

** = ninjad by Footkerchief

[Kogut]

made forbid/etc. from stocks screen not effect items used for buildings when applied to an entire group

noooo! past are the days of grouping my workshops by stone-type to "de-/activate" them in groups =(

toady, is there already a feature to fix that fix in the works? i found the ability to forbid all granite-workshops at once while the chert ones still work to be really useful...

Well, it was not supposed to be used this way and for me it is a great bugfix.