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[Elone]

There's at least four people in this little dance.

There is an undercurrent of frustration, bitterness, and negativity on this forum that seriously undercuts much of the creative endeavors, and I see much of that being fed especially by the "face" of Bay 12 in the form of those who are moderators or "old guard" driving people away from the forums, which does not do Toady the service they think they are doing.

Five!

I am slightly inclined to agree with the second because of the treatment that I got from some 'big' forum names so far. And only slightly because I have not been here long enough, and it would be too early for me to accuse people of stuff just yet. Not nice!

I always thought that the biggest bit in the bug/suggestion problem is that virtually all bugs should be fixed, whereas majority of suggestions are junk that would please little, displease many, and take away from the bugfixing time.

However, however you look at it, suggestions are not going to get much attention. Whether the suggestions are many and bad, or whether devs dont give it much attention.

[bombzero]

There is an undercurrent of frustration, bitterness, and negativity on this forum that seriously undercuts much of the creative endeavors, and I see much of that being fed especially by the "face" of Bay 12 in the form of those who are moderators or "old guard" driving people away from the forums, which does not do Toady the service they think they are doing.

agree on this point, not as pronounced here as with other forums, (speaking of which, i find it funny when older forum users yell at me for knowing nothing about games i have been playing since i was 4, because i just made an account, but i digress.) still brings up an interesting point about assuming based on account creation date.

the main issue seems to be with older players who took a hiatus of some sort, and may have been around at a time in development when things were different, or that they stick to a small portion of the forums and lose scope of what is happening in other areas, (like how i know little about stuff happening on several of the forum subsections.) this i noticed due to some people who act quite hostile towards these 'user-studies' or 'blackbox testing' acts are quite active and polite in another forum section.

i do have a quite simple solution to all of the above issues.

if you don't like the context of a greened question, or a science thread, ignore it, let toady/footkerchief, respond to it, or explain respectfully why you disagree with their idea in the case of suggestions.

saying simply "this is stupid, get off the forum.", or "suggestions never get implemented.", or something like that really doesn't help progress the development of DF, forum goers have fixed several critical bugs in DF, even code related ones, and have actually been a driving force in many subtle ways to DF's development.

so please, think before you post.

[Cobaldunderpants]

I am really excited about these new changes. Especially the taming and potential domestication of exotic pets. However, I had a question about it and I don't know if this has already been answered here or in another forum. I'm going to use Giant Desert Scorpions as an example.

Lets say I make several fortresses in one world over the course of many (in game) decades where I do nothing but capture and tame Giant Desert Scorpions. Now if I am reading what was posted about the new taming rules correctly then eventually my dwarven civ will consider these creatures domesticated. This potentially means that I can trade with my civ for these creatures.

My question stands as this: If I trade for these desert type creatures and I live in a temperate climate will these animals just up and die on me from climate shift?
I use Giant Desert Scorpions in my example, but this could really apply to any exotic creature that occurs only in specific biomes. A yeti caught in an arctic biome and transfered to a desert could be just as relavent.

Sorry if this has been covered/general knowledge. I have looked for it but have not seen it mentioned on these forums or the wiki.

[Naryar]

Nah, they're scorpions, there are quite resistant to different climates.

Also deserts aren't divided between tropical and nontropical, hence GDS can appear on cold or scorching biomes.

[NW_Kohaku]

A minor point:

Now if I am reading what was posted about the new taming rules correctly then eventually my dwarven civ will consider these creatures domesticated.

You don't actually get to make exotics "domesticated" all the way, so if you're talking about abandoning an embark, and starting a new one and importing some of your old, tamed, creatures, then, depending on how much time has passed, they might have regressed back down to semi-wild or wild.

Spoiler: Toady Quote (click to show/hide)

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.

[nenjin]

Putting this into a spoiler for the thread's sake.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

saying simply "this is stupid, get off the forum.", or "suggestions never get implemented.", or something like that really doesn't help progress the development of DF, forum goers have fixed several critical bugs in DF, even code related ones, and have actually been a driving force in many subtle ways to DF's development.

so please, think before you post.

On the other hand, everyone who joins the forums has a creative brainstorm for at least their first month posting here. Pretty much without fail. Some people never stop having brainstorms, they post a new suggestion every week.

When people fall too deeply in love with their own ideas, and stop distinguishing the game and their own ideas, that's what I think gets older forum members hackles up.

I rarely see veteran forums members telling people to shut up, or that their idea is stupid. They DO routinely ask people to put things in the right places though, instead of trying to put their personal issue front and center so they can get the best chance of a response from Toady. That does get pretty annoying, especially when you've seen that behavior repeated for years. And when you stop and consider what was actually said that touched off this debate....it was literally just a link to the right place. It may have been terse, but that's all it was.

So personally, I think creative types need to be just as careful about associating their own ideas too closely with the game, or getting too defensive about it. Because for all the subtle effects our suggestions have on the game, they are simply that at the end of the day. Suggestions that Toady can take or leave. Treating them as more than that is trying to step over the line between player and developer, or asserting you have the right to. And that will eventually annoy someone.

[EmeraldWind]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Oh boy... I hate to say it, but these arguments are getting a tad out of hand.

I mean Kohaku, you have some kind of a point in your arguments but it seems you tend to harp on the same complaint over and over again.
By now, we know where you stand on these things and plenty of people seem to agree with certain points you make, but they seem not to agree with the way
you present them (or how often you present them). It seems like to me you tend to get too defensive about rather minute things, granted though I also notice certain people seem to try to provoke you (which succeeds a bit too easily).

You also point out that the vanguards might be causing problems with their dismissing certain questions, but I think people generally take their actions as antagonistic when they are on the receiving end (some of them are rude about it, which doesn't help matters; I have reframed from asking certain questions due to the possibility of it seeming like a "veiled suggestion," but usually in those cases it deals with a feature I assume Toady already has planned but hasn't yet implemented). But honestly, most are trying to help. A suggestion belongs in the suggestion forum, not to die but to grow. There it can be discussed, added to, brainstormed, and ironed out. Here... it will die. It will be lost among the tons of questions and answers and eventually be forgotten. As for suggestions not making in the game, this game is still a mere fledgling compared to the the game it will be someday. Suggestions will be added when the game is more stable. It will take time before Toady can incorporate others' ideas into his own. People already complain about feature creep with Toady adding ideas he was going to add eventually anyway, how about with feature creep from suggestions. But some features, like the tabs in the units screen were suggested by users. So it isn't like Toady doesn't listen, he just has a lot of other stuff to sort out first.

Aside from that, to people complaining about bugs. Remember that not all the bugs need fixing. Some need to be surgically removed like a dead liver and replaced with a functioning one. In the case of animal training for example, it wasn't a mere fix that needed some minor arbitrary recoding but an overhaul of something that was fundamentally broken. Another thing is some bugs, are there and might as well stay until an overhaul happens. For example, Toady mentioned pathing AI needs to be rewritten when moving fortress parts are added in. If he "fixes" pathing bugs now and later on has to overhaul the system anyway, what was gained? Another example with the interface, if he makes a new user interface what happens when it becomes obsolete and needs to be redone yet again (I'm not saying he shouldn't work on the interface at all, just pointing out that even if he does fix it up that it will have to be redone again eventually)? You could say these can be avoided by proper planning, but then again isn't complaining for him to do this stuff earlier than he intends to be breaking his plan anyway?

Finally, on the balance issue vs. bug argument I see balance issues as being bugs, but rather low priority ones. This is not because they aren't important, but because balancing issues need to be studied and tweaked multiple times before the proper balance is found. And balance issues tend to be not problems with the feature not working, just not working perfectly the way intended but functioning as expected.  Sometimes, like above, balancing certain things too early can be wasted time if a future feature upsets the balance anyway.

Altogether, I ain't exactly worried about the game being the perfect game at this point as some people seem to. I mean, the game is still in alpha. Even if you can argue that it is almost a full-fledged game the way it is, this doesn't change the fact the game is still infantile in its growth. I follow DF, not simply because of the gameplay or the community (even though those are major pluses), but because of the ambition behind the project as a whole. I'm here to watch it grow and see how it develops. In all truth, Toady is living my life long dream. He's designing something beyond application, simulation, and even game qualities. If and when he finishes this project calling it a game won't exactly be true, nor would simulation. It would be more like interactive artistic fiction. I would like to see what happens when this project finally reaches that state of existence. This isn't the only game that is reaching for new heights in these terms, but this is the one I decided to watch.

All that said, I notice the dev log mentions site export maps! YAY! I asked about them in the last FotF thread and said he'd put them in, but they were missing so I thought he changed his mind. I wonder how they work though. I won't ask directly though, since it seems we'll be getting the next release soon-ish (according to 3/17's dev log).

Edit: By "how they work," I'm wondering if you export them like any other export map or if you need to select the site first then an export option is there.

[Watsst]

Also for the sake of the thread.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I'm actually liking this back - forth going on here, it's being done intelligently with some nice responses. Although I would say its probably better it doesn't escalate to much or start pointing fingers and deriding people. My god... what would we do if the 'Future of the Fortress' topic got locked...

Finally, on the balance issue vs. bug argument I see balance issues as being bugs, but rather low priority ones. This is not because they aren't important, but because balancing issues need to be studied and tweaked multiple times before the proper balance is found. And balance issues tend to be not problems with the feature not working, just not working perfectly the way intended but functioning as expected.  Sometimes, like above, balancing certain things too early can be wasted time if a future feature upsets the balance anyway.

I agree whole heartedly. Many of the major balancing issues are quite well known, but just balancing them now may only work temporarily and be a wasted effort as newer planned features or overhauls are completed. I do think they are important, but fixing them now is more of a patch then a fix and may actually go the opposite way of making it harder in the future if to many raws or features are changed in the vanilla DF.

I'm super keen for the new update. Toady is pulling out some magic fixing up these important areas of the game. I'm interested to know what he's planning to do next. I hope its making it so prisoners get given food and water. I know you can put 2 tile stockpiles in their cells as a fix, but it never seems to work right for me (other people eating there, other stockpiles being prioritized)

[NW_Kohaku]

There's little point in spoilering things to stop a conversation if you're just going to keep the conversation going, anyway - either you keep mum, or you don't.  (And anyway, this topic shouldn't be too inflammatory...)

I agree whole heartedly. Many of the major balancing issues are quite well known, but just balancing them now may only work temporarily and be a wasted effort as newer planned features or overhauls are completed. I do think they are important, but fixing them now is more of a patch then a fix and may actually go the opposite way of making it harder in the future if to many raws or features are changed in the vanilla DF.

Some issues are easier to fix than others.  Although I obviously don't know the exact composition of the hard-coded aspects of DF, something like projectile velocity (whether it is ballista bolts or thrown objects) is probably something as simple to fix as just changing a single variable.  Even if that effort is "wasted" in the long run, multiplying projectile velocity by twice as much or half as much wouldn't be a significant amount of time wasted.

I'm also not sure how much of a place-holder the throwing code is right now.  Unless Toady wants to put in parabolic arcs over the z-axis on thrown objects, as well as things like catapults (which, granted, he might), this may well be code that sticks around. (Even if he does, he might still use much of the same code for overall initial force calculations.)

[Watsst]

There's little point in spoilering things to stop a conversation if you're just going to keep the conversation going, anyway - either you keep mum, or you don't.  (And anyway, this topic shouldn't be too inflammatory...)

The reason I spoilered it is because it's more turning into a long winded arguement between people about elitist posters and a bugs or suggestion debate, which doesnt fit with the topic. And by keeping it spoilered it keeps the post short, people who dont care for it can ignore it, and it allows for new posts related to the "Future of the fortress" to start back up again.

Some issues are easier to fix than others.  Although I obviously don't know the exact composition of the hard-coded aspects of DF, something like projectile velocity (whether it is ballista bolts or thrown objects) is probably something as simple to fix as just changing a single variable.  Even if that effort is "wasted" in the long run, multiplying projectile velocity by twice as much or half as much wouldn't be a significant amount of time wasted.

I'm also not sure how much of a place-holder the throwing code is right now.  Unless Toady wants to put in parabolic arcs over the z-axis on thrown objects, as well as things like catapults (which, granted, he might), this may well be code that sticks around. (Even if he does, he might still use much of the same code for overall initial force calculations.)

Your right in that he could go any way with it. But I dont think it'd be that easy, is it only velocity (in the game) that is causing all the damage or a mixture of a couple of values? Would halfing the value also stop shattered bones and insta-kills? It wouldnt fix problems such as having no throwning skill and being super accurate and killing people . And knowing how Toady works if he was to target the problem he would also probably go for mass completion of the problem. Probably a system that draws more heavily on attribute values, strength how far thrown/damage, spatial sense/focus on accuracy etc.

[NW_Kohaku]

Your right in that he could go any way with it. But I dont think it'd be that easy, is it only velocity (in the game) that is causing all the damage or a mixture of a couple of values? Would halfing the value also stop shattered bones and insta-kills? It wouldnt fix problems such as having no throwning skill and being super accurate and killing people . And knowing how Toady works if he was to target the problem he would also probably go for mass completion of the problem. Probably a system that draws more heavily on attribute values, strength how far thrown/damage, spatial sense/focus on accuracy etc.

I'm fairly sure that the game currently works on a "Force = Mass x Acceleration Velocity" formula.  Bolts may be slightly too massive for their size, what with the whole "the entire weapon is made of metal instead of just the pointy parts" issue, but things like rocks are generally accurate, for the arbitrary size of rock that you always seem to pick up. 

I am pretty sure that strength and overall body size already does play a part in weapons, in that it determines a maximum velocity based upon the mass of the object being swung.  I have done no testing on this, but it makes sense for this to apply to thrown objects, as well. 

Accuracy is something decoupled/decouplable from the force equation.  Accuracy seems to be based upon whether or not the projectile diverges from the direct flight path to the target tile sufficiently to actually be flying into a different tile from the target or not, with some additional straight skill checks for things like passing through a fortification arrow slit from range or what seems to be an opposed dodge/block roll for the target to evade damage.  When talking about the specifics of accuracy in terms of divergent flight, though, the calibration of the difference between extreme attribute and skill levels may need adjusting, as well. 

[thvaz]

Armor were designed not only to stop damage by offering resistance, but also to deflect blows and projectiles. I don't think DF simulates this deflecting characteristic - it only considers the resistance of the materials of the weapon and the armor.

[DG]

Toady, can you expand on what you mean by more consistent led creature behaviour?

[Moddan]

Armor were designed not only to stop damage by offering resistance, but also to deflect blows and projectiles. I don't think DF simulates this deflecting characteristic - it only considers the resistance of the materials of the weapon and the armor.

Yeah, especially against ranged metal armor should deflect a lot of imcoming projectiles if they don't impact with a good angle(90°). At the moment metal bolts pretty much always completely piece any kind of armour making life even for a well armoured adventured excitingly short. A simulated angle based on luck, attacker and defender skill(dodge, armour) might lead to some more deflections.

[NW_Kohaku]

Armor were designed not only to stop damage by offering resistance, but also to deflect blows and projectiles. I don't think DF simulates this deflecting characteristic - it only considers the resistance of the materials of the weapon and the armor.

I'm fairly sure that's what the armor user skill is for - in adventurer mode, you tend to get a lot of "deflect the blow" reports.

I haven't done testing on the subject, but I am given the impression that, with the "angle of the blow" mechanics, armor user makes the angle less menacing, and I don't know this, but the hardness of the armor should rationally give a bonus in this regard.

(Who feels up for some arena science?)