Thanks to Knight Otu, MrWiggles, Rockphed, Neonivek, Cruxador, Footkerchief and Putnam for answering some of the questions not included below, as well as anybody I missed.
How are you planning to handle nonlethal combat?:
*Will there be a hitpoint system in place, or some way for bruises to incapacitate people?
*How will you deal with the brain-punch problem? (Lower punch force? Higher skull strength?)
*Will occasionally lethal punches still be possible?
*How will this affect blunt weapons like maces and warhammers?
Wouldn't a slight adjustment to the toughness of the skull be somewhat necessary, perhaps a mengis layer or making the skull a little tougher, etc? I've noticed that punching can get a little bit easy to instant kill someone, for something that's considered non lethal (read, taking out two people in two turns, shattered skulls fatal.) Or perhaps higher the threshold for death, such that a bruised brain would more likely cause unconsciousness then death?
Of course, if those are too unfitting, how about the ability to change the amount of strength put into an attack, so one can deal a light punch to the head while dealing full blown punches to the rest of the body?
Hitpoints is not really the correct word, since computers are all numbers and there isn't going to be some number that kills you. Bruises are already calculated using a few numbers for each wound on a body part's tissue, their severity and area and so on, and that can already cause some trouble for people and their functions. It's just not good enough. There'll just be a further reckoning with the systems that have been broken for a while, and everything's still on the table. I don't think I can fix the skull properly without adding a new parameter to body parts to further account for their geometry, but that might be a fine thing to do. Punches by very skilled, strong people should still sometimes cause death, since that happens in reality. I'm not sure how it'll affect blunt weapons, but the goal is to leave them better than I found them.
Since goblin armies moving across the map to attack will be tracked as a replacement for a goblin army just popping up on your doorstep, is this going to scrap the grace period that you have with the goblins for the first year and a half or so? I would imagine that if you're halfway between a goblin fortress and the Mountainhome it is attacking, you'd be attacked even if you were a very young fortress.
I guess I'd tend toward let the dice roll on a player that wanted to plop their fort right down in goblin territory, but it would be easy to preserve the grace period at the same time.
Will units be able to block with weapons rather then attack by the next release? And will two units be able to get into a deadlock with their weapons, struggling to either get clear of the attacker or get a strike in himself?
On the note of cool duel-y things like that, would a hero be able to march into a bandit camp and challenge the leader to a one-on-one battle? If the bandits don't just shoot the hero down first anyway.
Do you mean in addition to the parrying they already do? A defensive stance? There aren't any deadlocks though we've floated that in the past. We'll have to see where the reaction moments go. I haven't done anything with duels.
Will there be claims that dont interfere with each other? Say a Political claim on a city by a warlord and a religious claim by on or another religion? Will factions engage in Site-trades where it is viable say as reparation after ending a long-term war?
Yeah, not all claims interfere -- the claims have lots of parameters, and that's only going to get more interesting. I haven't thought about any higher order diplomacy yet. Agreeing on territory is certainly a reasonable thing.
If I attack someone in town with a non-lethal attack, would the town try to subdue me, or would they just kill me like they do now?
It'll start as a nice non-lethal scuffle. At least until the animals get involved. That'll probably turn it into lethal combat until people are more reasonable and animals are more combat-averse.
Do you have any plans to add more complex and advanced search options to the site finder? Like searching for an specific kind of ore or stone.
I don't have any specific plans for it. That information doesn't appear on the readout, and I've always been ambivalent about the amount of information you should be given, as a default, but it wouldn't bother me if there was some sort of world gen setting for more specific readouts.
Does this mean that, in Fort mode, your civilization (or others) could be wiped out during play? Presumably this would affect caravans and such as well.
Does this also apply to megabeast attacks? Which, in particularly crazy worlds, could lead to every civilization being wiped out in play.
Yeah, this'll be a danger, although your parent civ would have to be reasonably pathetic to lose its best fortresses over a few years. But yeah, especially in megabeast heavy modded worlds, when we get the megabeasts moving around, things could get very bad. I still haven't activated megabeasts yet, precisely because they need to have some controls.
Would our character be able to mix different types of attacks together? I would assume we can bash a Goblin in the Head with the Shield while Hacking the Left Lower Leg off with the Battle Axe; but could we also throw the Battle Axe while attacking with the Shield, or try a Wrestling Move with our Leg while doing an Attack?
I still haven't settled on specifically what penalties there should be, but you will be able to do different sorts of actions all at once, with whatever objects, wrestling, etc.
- Will it be possible for a dead civilization to rebuild it's self aka if a race or kingdom went extinct and you make a adventurer and retire, is it possible to make them become an actual NPC peasant or sum ranked noble (like a king) that will rule over and give orders to the people so they can either rebuild or make a new civilization? (this kind of concept would work well if you gen a world with no civs, great for a Genesis type scenario)
- Will it be possible for a player adventurer to be able to retire anywhere? (tied to the second question which relates to the Genesis type scenario)
- Will it be possible for if say a Hord of demons from underworld or a Forgotten beast were to break free and slaughter your fort; be able to roam the world freely and attack or destroy or take over civs?
I don't understand the first one... the adventurer rules over the extinct people and they rebuild?
You mean like retiring in the wilderness? I'm not sure I like just letting you live if you are in a really bad spot.
Any historical monsters would still exist in the fort, and that will mean more and more now. They won't be inspired to wander around the wilderness outside the fort until the regular megabeasts get their brain upgrade.
During play, how often will the game update to account for events occuring in the world?
Dwarf Mode is somewhat removed from the world, so I guess that could be handled seasonally, but in Adventure Mode a significant change in the area you are in might be jarring.
It is a constant process, pretty much, rather than one giant periodic update, and people either do stuff away from the locally loaded area, or, in some cases, they actually perform them step by step in the local area. When towns are destroyed, for instance, groups of invaders run around the travel level map hitting blocks at a time (and they don't know how to do it locally yet), and it doesn't happen suddenly but can take them some in-game hours to finish.
Will the inclusion of non lethal combat mean the hammerer and other executioners not be as prone to absolutely flattening criminals who they beat?
There might be incidental changes when the head is changed, but the use of a hammer is still lethal, and it is not their role to hold back.
Toady:
1) Will we ever get to see families fleshed out more, such as humans creating noble Houses.
2) If megabeast AI is improved, will we ever get to see things like Giants herding/riding Mammoths and Elephants, or Cyclops herding sheep and cattle (ala the Odyssey)?
The succession stuff which'll go in this time is going to highlight families more, I imagine.
I'm not sure how exactly our megabeast antics will manifest themselves.
In the DF Talk, you were discussing legacys, both for Adventure and Fortress mode.
Regarding Adventure mode, you wanted to give more options to leave a creative/constructive legacy behind. Many of the ideas that the Podcast was throwing around were reliant on the current "activating worldgen in gameplay" that you are currently programming.
Where are constructive Adventurer tasks on your list of priorities?
I imagine positive adventurer actions as things like site creation (Houses, Camps, Shops), and leading adventure mode entities (bandit groups, roving bands of monster hunters, paladins of a god, etc.)
With adventurer entites becoming an increacing possibility;
Will there be more in-depth NPC interactions and conversations?
During the podcast, you also mentioned more interesting seiges and raids from gobbos.
In long, protracted seiges can we expect to see goblins building shelters, and receiving food and materials from their point of origin?
They are on the main list but I don't have a timeline. I imagine the possibilities with NPCs are just going to slowly increase over time. Goblins don't need food, but I'm still hoping to do supply lines in general, since they control so much about tactical decision making.
Will the system of large worldgen battles being concluded as a series of one on one duels be touched upon this update? If not, do you see it as being necessary in this set of world persistence updates, or will it wait until external military actions by the player are possible?
I haven't changed it, and I don't think it is necessary for this time. As long as we leave world gen with the world intact we are good for this time.
Re: The June 15th devlog, this entry seems to indicate that at least in the heat of battle, personal qualities, motivations and emotional reactions are going to have more of an effect. Now that you're tackling group movements in more detail and at all scales, will these get the same treatment as you go along, or will you add them in at a later date?
I'm not sure what you mean -- the decisions of the group leaders? Group movements during the heat of battle? It's still kind of everybody for themselves once combat finally strikes.
Toady, when you can send your armies out and watch them, can you also manage the fort at the same time or can you only do one thing (either watch the battle or manage the fort) at a time?
It is likely the battles will need to be resolved in some sort of frozen time before you return to your fort. It might be possible to have both areas loaded simultaneously, but I imagine that would both be slow and a mess of bugs.
Given the Gods' more active state in recent releases (with curses and such), what are your plans for adventurers concerning conversations with their deity of choice? Even if it is something as simple as an occasional "Leave me alone, mortal, I have more urgent matters to attend to."
I have no idea what'll end up happening. Most of the time they don't seem to talk to anybody, and if we follow the world gen example, it'll just be to say something mean before they turn you into a night creature.
Does two handedness of a crossbow(or any ranged weapon) have any effect on the rolls when being fired, like it does with melee weapons? It only matters for mods since vanilla crossbows are apperantly always used as one handed weapons, but when I tried to ?science? it myself my results came up really inconclusive.
Yeah, although the two-handed stuff is unsatisfactory as we all know... But the code I'm looking at says that if the ranged weapon is two-handed for the body size of the wielder, and they experience a "two handed failure" (by not having a free grasp on top of the main grasp holding the weapon), then the hit roll is halved.
Toady how are you going to marry creatures who have incredibly fast and sudden strikes but cannot do it often (Like snakes) and ones who can attack often?
For example a snake
There are pre- and post-strike time periods. I haven't altered snakes yet, but that's the sort of thing we'll be able to do. A snake could be allowed to strike within 2 clicks for example, but take 10 or more to recover, or whatever makes sense.
Toady, with all this talk about bandits eventually destroying towns while you watch, will invaders be able to destroy our fortress walls eventually?
Whether or not invaders can dig is one of the big topics of conversation that comes up. I lean toward having them be able to do it, since sieges are technically pointless without that ability, with the option to turn it off for people that want to do what they want.
Will we be able to adorn our forts with bodies impaled on spikes, etc?
I haven't changed anything there.
Will we ever be able to arrest tantruming dwarves again? Personally, I don't like seeing civilians go unpunished for crippling craftsdwarves and destroying furniture.
Are those crimes not reported by witnesses? I don't remember where that is at. The intention is not to decriminalize those acts, in any case.
How do the new attack phases effect the analysis of how square/easy the hit will be, etc., since circumstances may change in the time between the execution of the strike and the following through of it? I.E; You aim an attack at a goblin's lower body and it is shown to be very square. This may change to just square, or maybe even a direct hit opportunity by the time the strike lands.
When will the multiple layer thick trees be added? I recall you mentioning this as it may be required for elven sites (if I my memory is correct). Will this be applied to other things, such as all trees? Will trees be made to extend over one z level?
The squareness hasn't been changed at this point. You get the shot you ask for if it isn't deflected entirely. I think it might be too confusing if that information were rendered meaningless all the time.
No idea when the trees are going in. Priority increases as we want the elf sites.
When Goblins or anybody else attack a town, will normal peasants start locking their doors and/or even built barricades to stop the goblins from plunder their part of the city? Especially locked doors would interest me, since you can currently go in every house as you want.
It's not something that happens right now. It's reasonable for people to protect their lives and stuff, I just haven't gotten started on that kind of thing.
Do tents have any differentiating features or are they just something like cloth-block hovels at this stage?
How are tents handled? Are the just some sort of 1tile building akin to a bed or do the consist from Multiple parts like walls ceilings etc made from cloth (and supports/poles). Would it possible to set up a "cloth wall" in Dwarf mode?
Do tents provide protection from bogeymen at night?
They are pretty much cloth-block hovels, but they are displayed differently. I haven't embarked on having some kind of giant "tent" item that can turn into many tiles, since I'd need to figure out a construction tile rewrite first. It doesn't store them as a physical building, but they do get a zone. The current ones can be quite large for the leader. I haven't added cloth walls (curtains?) to dwarf mode.
Tents count as inside, unless I screwed up.
Will we have armies "just passing through" our fortress in the coming release?
Are refugees going to show up at our fortress demanding shelter if there are wars in the vicinity?
These things will start happening when we get to taverns, since I have to tackles some multi-racial fort issues before stuff'll work right. At least that's the current idea.
Will we see the armies on the travel map?
If you can see them, yeah. Right now you can see everything, but I'm going to hide some of the smaller groups, especially when they aren't nearby or in the open. The "in the open" part might be a little too messy to take on now. Forests and especially elevation add annoyances I'm not sure I want to tackle now.
Will the refugees from failed forts make camp? I ask because I recently noticed that the dwarves who abandon do not, as I assumed, scatter in all directions, but actually form a group.
I think it dissolves that group after one save/load, maybe, and stuffs them in a town. I haven't dealt with the overall game advancement problem -- like when you start a new fort, and it would normally shoot you to spring of the next year. But now there are armies doing specific things everywhere. Still an ongoing concern.
Ok so a fort is made at the border of another factions land, they make a claim on your site. (a player made fort is a site, right) and destroy you with an army, will you be able to reclaim that fort, will it become a part of that entity, will individuals live at your now dwarfless fort.
Basically, how will forts be affected, if at all, by site claiming?
More broadly are player created Sites under the normal rules for Site Claiming? So lets say you lose a fort through Not Invasion, and you spend a year or two in adventure mode. Will the Site be up for grabs like normal?
I haven't gotten to the repopulation stuff (it is on the plate for this time). Once I have that, and I have real armies attacking your fort (also o the plate), then yeah, your fort might not be available as a peaceful reclaim. If repopulation works, then technically there should be people moving to your fort, but they wouldn't understand what to do there since it doesn't fit the usual parameters. There aren't even usual parameters until we get the other racial sites in.
Player-created sites should be under the regular rules -- if things don't get finished there will be limitations. If you leave a site fallow and run around in adv mode for a long time, your site will be fair for critters -- whether or not it gets snatched up by random people probably depends on how much we do with dwarf sites. If humans aren't interested in moving into dwarf sites (player or not), then nothing'll happen if we don't have dwarf sites.
Characters that are among the first of their kind will often say "I have no family to speak of" when asked in adventure mode. Will the creation of these characters be explained in the future? Could we see procedurally generated creation myths, and how would that impact on gameplay?
Yeah, procedural creation myths are definitely in the cards, along with the overall metaphysics of how the various worlds and gods work and so on. We're looking forward to it and have almost jumped in a few times over the years, but so far it hasn't happened. I imagine at first it'll just flesh out the religions and so on, but we have those plans for the afterlife and all that, and it all relates.
Do multiple eyes, eyes in the back of your head, flexible eye stalks, and the like work with this system?
That doesn't currently do anything, but the way the arcs work, it is very easy to adjust the angles. Not sure exactly when I'll connect it up but it'll happen. I suppose a lot of the critters with animals just on the side of their head (like... most of them?) should get their giant arcs. But maybe most of it should be given the peripheral rating to make it playable.
Toady, does ambusher actually have any effect other then speed improvement with this new update? can it protect you from being spotted?
have you considered attempting to nerf some of the major grinding options in adventure mode?
It helps with avoiding being spotted in the peripheral vision area and helps you move silently.
I have some vague ideas about holding off the value of grinding, but it's a little dangerous -- there should be a skill cap on how much you can learn in a given skill in a day, before your brain rebels, realistically, for example, but you don't want that to interfere with the game.
Is the display of enemy field of vision, sounds and alert status dependent on your sneak and/or perception skill?
I think it would be great if there'd be some sort of fairly inaccurate "base information" about the enemy FoV and alert status, but if you'd get more and more precise information if your perception skill was higher. For example only show the status (searching, alert, normal or whatever) and a short direction indicator as default, but with a high perception skill you see the range and how long the guards will stay alert.
EDIT: same for sound obviously.
Will there be a way to toggle sound perception? Say, it's only visible in sneaking mode or in listen-carefully-mode?
The display doesn't depend on your skill. I guess it could, but I'm not sure if I like it or not. It depends on how annoying it is when all the info is turned off.
Sound perception isn't toggleable right now. It was the only thing happening outside of your field of view, so it didn't matter, but now that you can detect things as well, it might matter.
To what extent are sounds going to expanded ? Will there be some things like a way to hear to stomping of a dragon in a cave ? I'm thinking of minotaurs' labyrinth too, where there is a basic placeholder for the beast's voice echoing through the corridors.
You can already hear animals stomping around wherever, as long as they are close enough. The labyrinth is kind of the highlight of how bad the current system is, because the passages should probably distort the apparent direction of sounds, but it should tell you where talking is coming from in general, including stuff like out-of-sight market chatter.
How will the new sneaking system work with companions? Hopefully we won't have our companions lumbering through the camp while we are trying to stealth. How will this be handled? Perhaps a placeholder "Wait here." kind of system, or will they somehow stealth as well?
How will sound be further applied in adventure mode, if at all, besides the army camps and other infiltration situations in the future? What specific attributes/skills will tie in with all of this?
I think you'll probably just tell them to wait for now, until they can taught to be helpful.
Sounds are applied everywhere. You'll see them when you are being chased around by anybody, or just when you are walking through town. I don't think I've linked it to any atts or skills yet. It could just use situational awareness to give you the softest sounds perhaps.
Will there be an action available for adventurers to cut through tents?
Will this update see sneaking related quests? Such as sneaking into an army camp of a besieged city to kill their leader/general or poison rations?
We've considered tent cutting, and it could still happen. Not in yet.
It might be that there are fewer quests altogether, but more ways to sneak to get things done. I'm not sure you're going to specifically be told to do things related to the army conflicts. Although you'll have to be guided to which decisions are currently meaningful, I suppose. We're still thinking about where we want to be by the release.
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Topic: Future of the Fortress (Read 3839743 times)