I removed some of these since they covered bugs that have already been fixed in subsequent releases. Other questions were answered by people in the thread. I also removed some questions about timing/short vs. long term/near future, since the answer is almost always "I don't know", and some question-suggestions.
Are there any plans to implement a relatively easier way to handle zombies in Fortress mode such as a weapon material weakness, or a type of fire weapon such as a torch that doesn't set fire to terrain, or whatever else? Because I'm not sure how it's intended to be done right now - With how they revive about 10 seconds after death, there isnt even enough time to drag them to a modded "crematorium" or some such thing before you have to kill them again.. and then again.. and then again...
I don't know if embarking in hell is ever supposed to be easy, but there will be changes. Pulping is the idea we've floated the most, so that heavily defeated zombies would be unraisable mush. Having the evil regions re-raise with a lower frequency is reasonable, I think, though necromancers are a different matter and that'll depend on how "spell cost" and control-type stuff are handled later.
I have a quest to go to a mountain hall and kill a dwarven werebeast. Is this currently possible? If not, are such quests a bug?
Yeah, that'd be a bug.
Are adventurers-turned-vampire meant to be friendly towards raised dead?
Yeah, this is how it is supposed to work now. Zombies are sort of generically against the living. If they were actually animated under the active power of the necromancer, that would be different, and I imagine there will be other things going on over time.
I remember in 40d many historical figures led the squads that besieged your fort other than the leader of the enemy civilization, so an old fort would end up killing swathes of historical figures. However, it appears to me that the new enemies are mostly generated from the entity population pools.
Now that historical migrants arrive, will we also (someday) see squads of historical enemies where even the common troops are historical figures and not just the squad leader?
I don't know that there's been any change in how squad leaders are selected. There are plenty of historical figures to go around now in goblin civs, I think. They survive, at least. Are there historical squad leaders in 0.34.05? When we get to the army stuff we can expect more historical army people, but having the whole army be historical might not be possible, at least not for very long. It's probably more important to save historical goblins for times when their historicalness will matter.
Is it confirmed that there is only one "effect" per evil biome? Because I'd like to have more than one, at times.
There are sometimes two effects in the randomly generated interactions (there can be an animation and a material), but it only picks one interaction per region. It'll need to have a series of conflict checks as with curses to go beyond that I guess, and it would need to know when to stop. Eventually we'd hope for all of the regions to have their own character (that sphere region thing is one way to say it), and multiple effects would be required at that time.
I'd appreciate an in-depth explanation of the CE:PERIODIC syndrome tag. Are there valid values for it besides MOON_PHASE? I'm specifically looking for a way to make werebeasts that transform every night, because currently in adventure mode they're just naked peasants that like to chill out in holes.
I haven't done more than I needed for most of the tags. It's something that is going to grow over time, but I could only bite off so much at once.
Was there a specific motivation for removing the "rude" words from the language files? Just tone of how you want the goblins to sound, or was there pressure from some source, or did you need to cut down on language size?
I got sick of having to exclude them almost everywhere (the latest being the books). Having them anywhere they didn't belong made the game seem stupid, and it was starting to seem like they didn't really belong anywhere.
Are the rapid rates of reanimation a bug or working as intended? Are items like wool and hair supposed to reanimate, or this is a bug/unintended behavior?
It is working as intended, whether it is a good idea or not (there are two rates you could be referring to -- evil regions or necromancers). I suppose hair is weirder than skin is weirder than bones, by some measure, even if none of it makes sense (skin makes more sense than bone if you are considering connectivity). I haven't considered how or if to change it at this point.
Does vampire feeding pose any actual threat to the victim in adventure mode? I tried to feed on an unconscious bandit as a combat technique, but after five or six times decided it didn't seem to be doing anything.
The amount you drink depends on how thirsty you are.
Toady, there are reports on the modding forum that any Secret not able to raise the dead will result in wizards/things not able to build towers. Is this is a bug? Could this perhaps be because you linked up the whole 'undead minions' with 'towers' in the code? Even if some code/worldgen limitation prevents them from having towers, is there any chance that you might put in a tag so you could choose to have Secret-creatures dwell in a hut in the middle of nowhere, or a cave, go back and pretend to be a god, or just live in the forest instead? Those all seem like low hanging fruit, and might enable them to actually have apprentices, so stock-necromancers wouldn't just be over-running everything, which is what happens currently. This is probably on the bottom of the priority list though, sadly.
No, this is intended. It requires 50 zombies to build a tower right now. The ones that don't have 50 zombies have camps and zombie "bandit" groups, among the necromancers, in 34.05 anyway. I'm not sure what happens in 34.05 with other secrets.
The work on night creatures are finished for now or do you intend to return to them soon? For example, finishing randomly-generated vampires and integrating werewolves back to society.
It's hard to say when I'm going to get to things. Werewolf integration has some issues to it that aren't easy to overcome without getting to scheduling or some sort of multiple homes/movement. I was aware at the time of the original release that they are very lame in adventure mode, but fixing it right is a larger project.
Also, are current vampire arrival frequencies intended?
Now that the initial novelty has worn off, I've seen more than a couple complaints that dealing with vampires with any kind of regularity is more of a pain in the ass than particularly fun.
Like bogeymen, I imagine it'll be reduced as we add more stuff.
Are there currently any plans to make Dwarf Fortress large-address-aware? A mod is currently available to do so, and the response has been largely positive in that it allows history to work for a significantly greater time. It would be great to see that make its way into default DF.
I have no idea what this would do both with my stuff and with some of my libraries. I'm not eager to introduce a bunch of strange bugs. When we go to 64 bits I'll have to deal with it.
Could animated/ghost creatures stop blinking with N~ once they're assigned proper graphics?
If they have a specific creature animated image, or even in the default animated case? I guess it's weirder for a tile to flip between two images than it is to flash an N.
Are there any plans to bring back glumprongs and sliver barbs?
It's on the list for this cycle of bug fix releases.
When creatures attack each other, how does the targeting work? How do they choose which part to attack and which weapon to use? Does this take into account the strikes of opportunity, or is the selection random? In other words, are strikes of opportunity something only I can do when using the "A" menu in adventurer mode, or are they something all creatures use automatically, even me when I simply attack my opponent using the movement arrows?
EDIT: Footkerchief and the others respond that creatures do use strikes of opportunity. But then why does attacking through keyboard arrows give me different results than attacking via the "A" menu. For example I open the "A" menu and see that I have a "simple strike" opportunity to kick my enemy in the left foot. I close the "A" menu and attack enemy using arrows instead. I would expect my character to kick his foe into the left foot, but he bashes him with mace to the head.
Yeah, they all get the opportunity strikes, and there is a formula the AI (and pressing arrow) uses to pick one. It values guaranteed strikes, but it also values head shots, and it really likes guaranteed head shots! It prefers the body if it can get it, but it really doesn't like missing. So it'll often pick opportunity attacks (the !) but if there's a pretty solid head shot in there, it might win out. The critters get all the same chances you do.
Is there any particular reason a creature can't be subjected to multiple body transformation effects, such that the most recent would have priority?
I don't recall restricting it. There's no particular reason I can think of if it is. It would just be a bug. If you are talking about a werebeast not becoming another werebeast, that's just part of the curse and I think it should stay that way.
Are there any grand plans for how Fortress Mode stockpiles are managed, or some kind of visual identifier, UI something, Grand View? Anything that will make it a sporadic plan-as-you-go player feel more empowered when handling stockpiles?
We are going to do a hauling overhaul as part of this cycle of bugfix releases. That is going to intersect stockpiles, but I don't know if it's going to cover exactly what you want.
toady, how much do you think the "Work with 3D mineral veins and mine maps" scheduled for the next arc-release will impact the gameplay of the different modes and does "Villager/farmer schedules/activities" have any implications for fortress-mode?
What does "Villager/farmer schedules/activities" entail in the next release? Simple daily activities such as meals and work only? Or do you plan to have things such as attending religious ceremonies at specific locations of worship at specific times? Will farmers make trips to towns to sell food after harvest? Would they halt their activities for a short while to exchange a few pleasantries between friends?
How rigid would the schedules be? Would a farmer postpone the aforementioned town trip if it was raining or would he wait for better weather?
I assume all or at least most of this could be observed in adventure mode, otherwise it would be rather pointless.
I'm not sure how it's going to work out yet or how much ground it'll cover. It'll all be observable in adv mode. In the strictest interpretation, the scheduling has nothing to do with fortress mode, but it rarely works out that way.
Have you considered adding a temporary limitation on just how many times a part can be raised? or will that have to wait until pulping/better damage stacking?
I don't want to put in a counter. I think related raising interface and other incidental stuff would make it messier than just doing pulping sometime.
Will the improvements to mineral veins and the addition of mine maps have a major effect on worldgen in the number of metal items made? Will that then translate into a larger number of weapon/armor shops and a larger number of metal goods at the market? Will towns closer to major mines have more blacksmiths, miners, furnace operators, and shops containing the products of these jobs? Will there be warehouses full of iron ore/bars/goods in mining towns, or does worldgen space out items through trade too much to see that?
Right now you don't see most of the raw resources in town. There are too many items to stick in the current warehouse and I want to spread them out among the future industry sites and I'll probably just need to stack them too, as well as adding more warehouses. There will be automatic effects already when minerals are spread out, and it probably already happens to some extent, though it is hard to notice because they mostly don't work on metal items because they have no reason to. If they lost metal objects when their armies die out in the wilderness it might contribute, or if they needed tools. There's just not enough being modeled yet (abstractly or not). World gen trade does move things around quite a bit, probably more than it would if people were guarding their interests. I'm not sure if that's going to lead to more weapon/armor shops. They aren't really thinking of being an adventure game economy right now, and I'm not sure they will at any time. That said, you should be able to find things easier than you can now, and there are various other things that can be done (paying to have a weapon made for example).
When travelling at night, travel map visibility is reduced to 1 tile, but the zoomed in travel map (which is great by the way) is unchanged. Is this to reflect the greater light sources near to towns or will this change?
Temples in cities appear to have above ground, constructed walls that are also engraved. This seems inconsistent with fortress mode (maybe humans know somthing that dwarves don't). Should we expect a change here?
Both of these are inconsistencies that should be changed. No idea when.
What are bogeymen?
As in, what is their specific nature of existence? Are they fae creatures of another realm that only come to this world when the subject in question is alone? Or are they a result of a subjective/mythic reality where fear itself creates them from the mind of the people they attack? Or are they something else entirely?
Threetoe floated a theory in his last story:
The people of the dark haunted all lonely places in the black of night. Sudemong spoke of a dimension of darkness haunted by countless legions of these creatures. Knowing no true form, they borrowed their shapes, woven from shadow. Light was poison to them, and they were evil.
Is it intended for coins to not show up on the trade menus?
They haven't really been integrated into fort mode very much and have basically been left to rot until we get around to economy stuff.
Does this mean things like wardogs will actually deal more damage and/or take more damage as the site's training knowledge increases?
This is not an attempt to answer the question, but I'd guess that animal training could involve raising the animals' Fighter/Biter/Wrestling/etc. skills. CAN_LEARN would have to change or be loosened though -- I don't think any basic animals have it right now.
I haven't addressed the fundamentals of what the war/hunting animals are. That's all the same.
can we expect a similar overhaul of the tax collector's position/role if/when you work out a way to make the dwarven economy function in a sane manner?
It's very hard to say what'll happen when I get to that, and I'm not sure in what form taxes will manifest or survive.
I've noticed that, as of 34.01, creatures in post-abandonment player fortresses don't randomly gather at meeting hall zones anymore (just stand around, not moving at all from wherever the game decides to put them). Was this an intentional change?
I don't remember changing anything here, but it has been a while.
Is this sort of training knowledge at the civilization and fortress level something that you just came up with for this particular issue, and/or is it something that you had/have planned for other skills?
Necromancer secrets are written down in and can be learnt from books. Will all information or knowledge, including animal taming, be subject to the same mechanic? Or will only specific skills be spread by pen and paper?
Do you have any plans to combine the civilisation animal training knowledge with book writing and if so will the books be tradeable or would it be for flavour?
Are there plans to extend the new training system to other aspects of the game, such as metalworking?
We haven't thought too much about tech-treeish type expansions for general skills or how exactly books are going to be involved. Since the world gen economy has gone in, there's been a specialization measure in world gen, and that now controls the quality of the items you find in all of the shops. I'm not sure how all of this stuff is going to end up merging and intersecting. I'm just dipping in a few toes for now.
How do civs gain familiarity with a given creature? Is it a guaranteed thing that if the creature is nearby and PET/PET_EXOTIC, then it will be tamed, or is it a chance/probability thing, or does it rely on historical figures to take a hand in the process?
Will Fort knowledge flow back to the civ in some way? Such that a fort that manages to tame a dragon will be able to impart some measure of knowledge back to the civ, so that if a subsequent fort also catches a dragon it will be easier to tame.
How does this alter the PET_EXOTIC tag? Is it obsolete, or does it signify a creature more difficult to domesticate than another? Speaking of, are some creatures more difficult to tame than others? I imagine if a civ has roughly equal numbers of wild dogs and, say, honey badgers in the area, the dogs would be more readily domesticated. Not that I pretend to any knowledge of what makes a creature easy/difficult to domesticate.
Will you be able to bring the exotic animals your civ is familiar with on embark, and/or request them through the caravan? I could see that embark menu getting rather cluttered if that's true, and it would kinda obsolete the COMMON_DOMESTIC tag, but at the same time it would be lame to have a jungle dwarf civ that has tamed the tigers, but not be able to bring/buy/request any.
How does this affect the Elves? Huge varieties of exotic animals are kinda their thing, but it sounds like a reasonably large civ could have access to as many or more exotic animals than a smaller/more restricted group of Elves.
Generally, the idea is that common domestics and PETs available locally will be domesticated by the civ, and local PET_EXOTICs and journey animals will have a mid-level. All the restrictions on good/evil/cave etc. are still in play, and elves still domesticate all the exotics.
Merchants that leave successfully to your civ transmit some info that way. It's a pretty small amount, but it saves all the fractions permanently, so you'll be having an effect.
You don't get the exotics in trade or with migrants.
In a similar vein, since I was tired of mahogany being the same value as tower-cap, I started adding differing material values for wood. Looking up wood I was unfamiliar with brought me here, which appears to have the physical (shear strength and whatnot) properties of most woods - couldn't find saguaro rib, but eh. Cactus. Would you be interested in a formatted list (and/or a raw file with the properties already added) if I made it, Toady? Has anyone else made it and am I wasting my time?
We used some values for stone, and I'll put in any sourced values that people find eventually if I'm pointed to them, for the existing materials/values in the game.
will dwarves become attached to their war animals like they get attached to items?
The trainers become bonded to the animals they are training, but I haven't changed the pet behavior for assigned work animals.
Any plans to do anything with animal health care along with the new training system?
I'd been thinking of them separately, so I haven't scheduled anything, and I haven't really thought about how it should be updated yet.
will animals that are naturally domesticated, such as cows and dogs, ever lose their training?
Will the "wildness" of animals be affected by breeding? I.e. will we be able to breed animals that are successively less given to "going wild" over time (also affecting training rates, maybe)?
Is there a certain point where the tamed animals will remain as such permanently without further management, or is it more a matter of 'reverts in a month' versus 'reverts in a decade'?
Furthermore, how much warning will the player get before the cuddly tamed dragon in the meeting hall reverts back to wild and barbecues everyone?
"Deteriorating training status and reversion to a wild state" sounds kind of ominous. Does this mean that domestication is going to wear off after a while?
I must add : If it means that domesticated animals turn back to being untamed after a while, will this be the case after reclaiming an old fortress ? So we could have a succession fortress where hydras were tamed, but the only legendary dresser died, so the hydras were sealed and everyone forgot about them until the fortress collapsed and the reclaim party has to face the newly-freed hydras ?
If the civ's knowledge is all the way up at domesticated, the animal becomes Tame as before and never reverts. As it stands, you can't yet cross the boundary to domesticated from a wild beast, since there's extra infrasture to be dealt with with breeds and all that. Children inherit their training status from their parents, and if a trainer gets to an animal when it is young, it becomes Tame and never reverts. The word "trained" is somewhat weird that way. It doesn't refer to how many tricks the animal knows, but more how acclimated it is to dwarven life. So a "masterfully trained" animal will have "masterfull trained" children which can be raised up to tame if you catch them early, but after some years of complete inattention, the masterfully trained parent can revert back down the ladder all the way to semi-wild and wild. Tame creatures will have tame children that never need basic training. So you can eventually get up to a population that is essentially domestic, with your trained exotics having trained children which are tamed and then have tamed children for all generations after that. However, this won't give you "domestic" civ knowledge -- which means that a new exotic of that species which you capture will still have to be trained and reinforced (instead of jumping up to Tame).
You are currently warned about reversions to a semi-wild state. That should give you a season or so of warning before anything terrible happens, though semi-wilds can be a little nippy on occasion (which can be bad for a dragon). If you have an assigned tamer and you haven't overloaded the system by assigning one poor guy to 100 animals or something, all reinforcement training is automatic, so you shouldn't have to work too hard to keep your dragon satisfied.
Toady, what do you mean when you say "deal with damaged clothing" ? That dwarves will ty and get other clothes when their own are too worn-off ? Will they do so only if there are other ones available ? Will they prefer a xshirtx over a XXshirtXX, or will they go naked if there aren't any new garments ? Will they really care about walking around naked ?
It's not 100% decided yet. Their old way of doing things was to update XX with x, and that might stay in. However, damaged clothing needs to go away, especially if no one wants it. It might just rot in the refuse pile now, and it'll get there because ownership will be cancelled on it. I'm going to need to mess around with it a bit first.
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Topic: Future of the Fortress (Read 3844264 times)