A lot of the questions were answered in the thread. There were several repeat questions, so if you don't find yours by your name, you might find it in another response.
Is it the mother or father's training status passed on, or some amalgam of both?
It uses the mother's status.
what, exactly, does the champion do? Is there any particular benefit to having the champion be a skilled fighter as opposed to some random Urist McSchmoe (in 40d, a "champion" was any dwarf who reached legendary in a fighting skill (...right? It's been a while...), so I'm assuming high skill would help)?
I'm pretty sure (but can't prove) that BUILD_MORALE is responsible for the "pillar of society" type thoughts that dwarves can have.
Yeah, that's right. The champ makes the traditionalists happy and the others a little grumpy. I think the only thing that'll influence how good they are at their job is making them more friendly/gregarious so they chat with more people.
While you were fixing other animal-trading related bugs, did you fix the bug that prevents you from selling animals? (I'm referring to the way in which designating a cage for trading empties the cage first.)
I remember testing it out and having it work, but since I didn't have to fix anything, whatever bug there was is probably still there.
Will an animal that goes from tame to wild lose its need to eat? And will it retain war/hunting status or revert back to a normal state?
Will the new taming system have an effect on vermin tameing?
I don't think it'll need to eat when wild. It retains the training type/bonuses. I didn't do anything with vermin.
If a trained creature completely reverts back to a wild state, is it then functionally-identical to a standard wild critter who's never known life in a fortress? If I leave it outside, will it wander around normally and eventually leave the map? Is it marked as no longer being a member of your fort for trap/kill order purposes?
Relatedly, what sort of AI do semi-wild critters use? How do they decide when/at whom/how often they lash out?
It's more like one of those giant spiders that takes up residence and eventually gets a name, I think. Kill orders probably work but I didn't try them. Traps work. Semi-wild critters just occasionally attack like pasture-stacked critters, in moments of random animalness.
df_34_05_win_s\raw\objects\text\book_instruction.txt anddf_34_05_win_s\raw\objects\text\book_art.txt are (rather short) listings of hardcoded types of titles. Is it helpful to suggest a new ones (maybe based on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Books_by_century )? (I define helpful as "there is a chance that list like this will be used").
I'm not sure when I'll get back to it, so it's hard to say what the chances are that things will be used. If I find the suggestion when I next look at book titles, I'm sure it'll be useful. I can't guarantee anything.
Toady, what do the tags in the text raws actually mean? In particulary I'm wondering about how [NO_ART_NAME] is different from [NAME]. Are there any tags that might work that haven't been tested or used by default?
I don't think there are any extra tags. [NO_ART_NAME] removes the leading article if present. [PHRASE] generates some nonsense babble. The others draw from the word list.
We've heard you say you knew were-creatures were in an unsatisfactory state when you decided to update, and that they'll require at least another pass to bring them up to where you want. Have you given any real thought to what that'll require, other than some of the lower hanging stuff like "sometimes give them weapons when they're not in were-form"? Changing their transformation rules? Making were-curses grant better attributes out of were-form? Were-creature awesomeness isn't high on my list of desires, but they do make up a large chunk of vanilla content at the moment.
Additionally, do you have plans to make time for Vengeful Ghosts sometime within the Caravan arc releases, or have Night Creatures gotten all the work they're going to for a while?
I don't want to focus on the transformation rules, since the transformation rules are pretty traditional and should work before they are randomized. The reason they don't work is that the were-beast doesn't integrate into a town at all during the non-monster period, and even in cases where it shouldn't, the non-beast is hiding in a cave that you get quest-pointed to and it doesn't run away. If it were harder to track them to those locations and you had trouble finding them in general, it would be fine to catch them in human form sometimes, and perhaps even bring them back to town as criminals. It should be made to work without having to change the idea of what the were-beast is (although doing daily or voluntary transforms is all good too).
I don't know what the timing is going to be for the rest of them.
Do you see the successive waves of migrants as an essential gameplay mechanic, or is it mostly a place holder? Do you see an overabundance of migrants as fundamental to the game, or could some circumstances lead to fewer available migrants?
It's going to change a lot later with scenarios/active world pops/hill dwarves/etc., though I think the idea of a growing fortress is going to be reasonably commonplace.
Do you plan to deal with hauling-related injuries to the hauling overhaul coming up? I'm sure we'll get healthcare improvements at some point, but I'm curious about the timing.
I fixed some bugs that might align with this in a previous release, but I'm not sure exactly what you are referring to here.
Toady, could you specify the details of your new PC?
I'm at my brother's place now, but it's some kind of Toshiba laptop thingy that has better speakers than I expected.
Can you give us some idea of how extensive the personality rewrites will be? (As in, how many currently existing systems outside worldgen will be impacted?)
Basically, how much more complex would the average dwarf or human villager's "brain" be in actual gameplay after this? Does this stop with things like "My student guidance counselor said my personality test results came back, and my ideal career is as a brigand because I love hurting people and stealing stuff, with a Life Goal of killing 3 or 4 adventurers" and just replace the 30 personality things with more "judgmental" traits, or does it go into breaking down/discarding the current happiness and preferences and the AI systems where dwarves choose what to do at a given moment and rebuilding them with more "moving parts" in action choice?
Will this include or directly lead to changes in the way you converse with others in Adventurer Mode? (Personality/mood changing how they talk?)
It's difficult to say. For fort mode, at the very least, it'll rewire the critters enough to handle job priorities, and the current happiness/thoughts system is going to be gutted. We have various other directions we might lean, but it's a huge area and I don't want to put anything else out there yet as a definitive short-term goal, at least not until we update the dev page.
Do you have any plans to allow more exotics to reproduce like GCS or GDS?
I don't have any particular plans there. It's a reasonable thing.
Will the reverse be done? That is, will a planter be able to carry around a bag of seeds when planting a field, instead of having to make a round trip to bag for each seed planted?
I haven't changed any of the non-haul job behaviors, though I know that one is an annoying case.
What about the so called quantum stockpiles? They are currently used to reduce time spent with hauling(among other things) ...do you plan to do something about them?
It isn't a big priority right now. The only ideas I had for that was making a pile of items become an amalgam that you could actually crawl over when it gets really obscene, or increasing pickup times, or making it difficult to spot the smaller objects in adv mode. I probably won't do anything with it now.
With more effective hauling, dwarves will have more time to spend on productive working. This means they will produce more. But we already have an overabundance of items in fortress mode, and there's so many of them that many items become virtually worthless (for the player, that is). Dwarfpower is rarely a trouble – on the contrary, it is often difficult to find enough work for all of your lazers. With more effective hauling, we'll have even more lazers. Is this something you recognize as a problem? If yes, have you considered any solutions?
I'm not worried about balancing that out right now. There are significant disruptions upcoming which'll utterly nullify anything surgical I try to do.
Along with minecarts, can we expect the dwarves to use wheelbarrows, handcarts, horse/OX/(other load bearing domestic animal)carts, as well as backpacks. do you plan on giving paved roads a speed increase to these transports(inc wagons).
There will be wheelbarrows and animals will come up somehow. That's probably it.
So how can we expect to power our carts ? Dwarfpower, animal power, mechanisms ?
As a corollary, how are we going to get our carts up z-levels from the deep mines? Are we getting elevators, too?
Dwarfpower and mechanisms work for carts. I don't think animals will be necessary since a dwarf can handle them all as it stands, and animals won't be able to think out their paths for themselves without a dwarf, so having an animal would just be a waste.
Any elevator operation that leads to moving fortresses is premature. We haven't ruled out carting them up with ropes/chains in some sort of mechanized system, but we're not sure what's going to happen.
Will tracks/carts be able to cross retractable bridges?
Yeah, right now they can cross any bridge. I'm not sure if I'll differentiate them later. It gets sort of moving fortressey to get into making tile-wise movements work, and I didn't want to get sidetracked into that before the basic system works.
Will it be possible to deploy tracks on build/smothed surfaces? Will dwarves use Minecarts as a form of public transport?
will we be able to have dwarves ride minecarts?
You can carve them whereever you can detail, and you can place them whereever you can construct floors.
I don't have a final verdict on riding minecarts. Of course it has to happen, but as for when or how the dwarves actually make that decision... kind of a can of worms.
Will it be possible to carve tracks on constructed floors (like fortifications)?
Will it be possible to "seal" a track with a door/bridge/whatever?
A track can be placed like a constructed floor, and you can place constructed stone groves, but you have to remove a previous constructed floor to place a track (you can place one directly on top of the itemless constructd floors that come from constructed walls).
You can place any building on top of a track (at least any building that would work on a stone/constructed floor).
Toady, the front page note says that tracks will keep information, by tile, in all four directions. Does this imply that tracks are uni-directional? Is that an option at construction? Will it be able to be re-designated later? Is it intended to have "main lines" with parallel, uni-directional rails, connecting with "branch lines" carrying lesser traffic volume bi-directionally? Will mine carts, and wheel barrows for that matter, be able to pass each other in the same traffic square, at a speed cost, similarly to dorfs passing on a same tile? Or will the mine cart be impassible, like a wall, or a statue?
I was just talking about north, south, east and west, within a tile. The tracks don't have a forced travel direction on them, although you define which way the carts at stops are sent. Carts cannot pass each other in general. I have no idea about wheelbarrows. Carts can be passed by units (moving carts might take exception later, but I haven't done that yet).
With minecarts being implemented will mining itself be variable now, in terms of amount of material produced out of a single square? What I mean by that is that it's hard to see a lot of use in a long track being built to a single vein that's going to be exhausted very quickly.
There's going to be a change but I don't have any specifics yet.
Will we get railroad switches linkable to levers? Actually, I'm kind of wondering how you'll handle turns, overall. And will we be able to build long slopes with a small gradient, so that minecarts can get momentum even on a single z-level?
Switchable tracks aren't in yet, but it's on the menu. I'm not sure what I'll get to though. I want to stay away from having microslopes anywhere. It's an added layer of complication to the display/simulation that we don't definitively need yet.
If track connections during construction are dependent on the order in which each section is built, does this mean that the order of designation by the player is tracked in "real time" so to speak, or would we have to build a section, wait for it to be constructed, then designate again if tracks run parallel?
I don't quite understand this one. I don't think anything depends on the order.
Is the new route system based off or related to military patrols, or is it all new?
Are we getting diagonals mine tracks?
Are rails tiles the single lines or something else?
Toady, do rails work like other stone carvings? If not, how do they work?
Will wheelbarrows and carts all have their own tiles adjacent to the dwarves or beasts that pull them, or what's the deal there?
I had considered the old routes, but I decided to just make it new, so there wouldn't be fussing with points.
There are no diagonal mine tracks. It looks bad, and as people said, it causes rotation issues with larger objects. Hopefully there will be objects larger than one tile on tracks in the future.
I'm using inverted double lines for rails. Those'll either be distinguished from the hidden engravings walls through a color convention, or hidden engraving walls will be altered entirely. I don't like single line rails.
They work like stone carvings, but you have to do them in 1-wide/high rectangular sections to get the connections established between tiles.
I'm not sure how wheelbarrows and beasts will work out. The minecart pushing job isn't done either, but I'm pretty sure the dwarf will be walking behind the cart there.
Toady, will there be mechanism powered carts? Will we be able to link the carts to a waterwheel or whatever?
The carts can't be linked, but there are powered sections of the track that go in one of the four possible directions.
Under what circumstances do you envision minecarts behaving according to minecart physics?
I.e., are they going to break free from time to time? What would cause that? How often are they going to go careening off out of control?
If they hit a corner too fast or hit a bad junction or track end or hit another cart really fast... lots of opportunities for trouble.
Can minecarts injure creatures that happen to be standing in the way while they are moving and, if so, does the mass of the cart and its contents impact the damage caused? Does the AI try to stay out of the way of moving carts?
I haven't done this yet, but it is assuredly going in before the release. The mass/speed will matter in the same way as it does with weapons, since it'll likely just call the same function. People with space will get an excellent chance to dodge out of the way. Slow carts will probably just bump and stop without trouble.
Do minecarts currently, or are they planned to have a maximum velocity? Just a point where no matter how many more ramps you put in front of it, it's just not going to go any faster? Or is the plan to just use map height limitations or a max 1 tile per tick rule to keep warp speed minecarts from hitting things?
Also in the hitting things vein, Will minecarts striking folks use the system that ballistas use where they just pick a random number of body parts to wreck when they hit something, or is there another plan in the works?
If I remember, they hit a terminal velocity going down, but it's quite fast.
I haven't planned out a specific new system for the damage.
Can you have interconnected track lines, that is to say, a system where a track could have "tributaries" that lead into it and join into the main line? Such that you could have, for example, three starting branches in a line converging into a single ending segment?
Yeah, you can set that up -- if a track deadends into a corner without actually forming a T, it'll allow the cart to pass into the corner without disruption, and you can set up tributaries that way. T's themselves don't have a defined preference for direction, so are useless for a cart that isn't passing along the straight part. 4-way tracks just allow carts to continue on straight. So as it stands, a T is just an unfinished 4-way intersection.
When a cart flys off an edge and hits another set of tracks, can it keep going?
By what amount will mine carts veer off course when they are launched through the air?
As it stands, launching from one track to another is 100% effective, if you have it lined up.
Can fluids be put in minecarts?
Will minecarts passing under a waterfall automatically fill up with water?
If the first two are true, WILL IT WORK WITH MAGMA?
Not as it stands. I haven't thought of how that might work -- fluids are either going to slow the cart down too much or it is just going to blaze through the falls. If the cart were stopped under a fall and then powered forward, it might work. We'll see what happens.
Will building destroyers destroy tracks? Carts? Carts in-flight-as-missiles?
Building destroyers don't target any of these... maybe track stops? Probably not even those.
How do adventurers interact with minecarts? Can they push them? Can they ride, or at least climb on top of, them? Do minecarts provide cover? Etc?
They don't interact with them yet. As far as I can tell, it'll happen before the dwarves ride them, since it is much easier.
How are junctions going to work, if at all?
Will it be abstracted, allowing carts to switch direction freely at any point where more than one rail intersect? Or only at 'stop' tiles? In either case, how will runaway carts coming up to the head of a 'T-junction' from the tail be handled? Will they just derail at that point, or will they be diverted? In the case of the latter, will the direction be random or constant?
Or will there be splits like on IRL rail lines, where carts coming from one direction are sent in only one of two (or three!) possible directions? If so, what would happen to carts coming up a secondary rail when its not the one presently being diverted to?
Concerning stops, would they work more like turntables, railheads, or just ordinary stretches of track? Would it be possible to link a lever/pressure plate to them and disable them, or to power them and launch carts into the system? Or do the dwarves have to manually send carts off again, unless one designed a system where an empty cart bumps the full one out of the stop?
Lastly: as for the carts themselves, would it be possible to use them as mobile stockpiles? By that I mean if I filled up some carts with stone and sent them down a dead-end rail to my masons' shops, would they take their stone directly from the carts or must I get some haulers to unload them first?
The carts do not switch freely at junctions. You can prepare a multitile junction as described above, and there might be switches later as mentioned above. At stop tiles, where a dwarf sets it on its way, you get a full fourway ability to send it on its way. Runaway carts hitting a T-junction will not pick a side -- they will continue on in violence.
In the multitile junctions, it doesn't care so much about the direction, so a cart coming up the wrong way will just continue along down the track.
I haven't done links to stops, though that's a reasonable enough thing to do. The track can't be powered under the stops since we are still stuck with the one building per tile limit, and the powered rollers are a building (like axles and gears).
I haven't finished the hauling jobs, but I think taking items from carts will probably be possible. Not 100% sure.
Does being in a cart count the same as being in a stockpile, or will rotting occur while perishable items are in the cart waiting to be sent down the line?
I think the items will keep.
In terms of automated zones, is "Empty" an option? In other words, can I set up an industry where ore is shipped to the forges, then the empty cart is sent automatically back to the mines?
Yeah, you can send a cart along after a time if it is empty (or immediately if it is empty). The timer can also send it along regardless of contents, and you can have as many timers with different conditions running as you want for a single stop. Once any timer is triggered, the cart will be set to depart.
Toady, will the physics for the minecarts be detailed/advance enough to maybe construct minecart version of Newton Balls?
Yeah, it works that way now, though it only propagates one step per click, so the cart reacting at the far side can take a little while to jump off. If you have tall ramps on either side, and start it with a cart at the top of one of the ramps, it should run until the friction of the carts moving along the bottom and up the ramps slowly drains it.
What happens if you follow a bolt that's in a marksdwarf's inventory, which he then fires?
When it splits the stack, the old id number sticks on one of the resulting items... I don't recall which one. I suppose people will want it to follow the bolt and then stay where the bolt hit/turn off, even if another bolt is fired? If it moves with the fired bolt and then resets to the stack until another bols is fired, it might get dizzying.
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Topic: Future of the Fortress (Read 3843393 times)