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[misko27]

It's tied to the fact that player fortresses have a variety of defenses/levers/general interactive things that would need to be left in play for a computer to handle. And since there are no proper ways for it to handle those, the player-run sites cannot be effectively run by the computer when left alone. This is the principle difficulty.

I wish Toady would at least do a place-holdery implementation that just ignores all that shit. I don't care if my fortress can kill the goblins with lava, I just want to be able to switch away from it to play adventure without having to lose all its residents or gen a separate world.

no, its mostly beacuse the players will leave it so a computer will destroy the fort. Think of it like this: The computers don't know hpw to operate Levers. If they ignore them, they run the risk of killing everyone. If they usethem, they run the risk of killing everyone. Its because its hard to determine intent, so they don't know if the drawbridge is there for sieges or when you flood everything with magma.

I think you are reading too much into it. All other sites are ran statistically and there is no reason player forts would be unable to operate under this conditions too.

Computer does not need to operate elaborate player designs - that is impossible problem unsolvable without players writing script to operate fort tailored for their fort themselves. Toady would have to write class-a AI to do general solution otherwise.

But game can easily see number of dwarves in military, their equipment and other stuff (like number of traps or siege engines), put it to fairly abstract "meatgrinder" to resolve siege and it would work out just fine just as battles are resolved in worldgen right now. Same working for industries and food production.

It does not have to be perfect, but i do not think it would be catastrophic either - it is mostly just turtle-ish forts without functioning army that will be harmed. Also, non-player forts are not subjected to as frequent sieges as player handled ones.

I see your points, and While I agree, I simply mustpoint out that there are just manyy player-controlled things in the fort to account for. However, as I said, I do see your point, but It raises another Problem. How the fort isr un won't matter unless world-gen continues after a fort is automated. I mean, it would be cool to go to your fort and recruit people, but there aren't shops, or money, or taverns. It wouldn't be all htat different ffrom what we have now, except with dwarves till there, and Even this can be accomplished with DFhack. So, In conclusion, I think it will be off for a while.

Even if you had just 1-3 trusted individuals working on just doing 32x32 tiles of every asset in the game, and spending the time to give the renderer good transparancy and item stacking, that would speed pretty much the whole project along to being a beta version instead of just an alpha version.

Beta is the software development phase following alpha. It generally begins when the software is feature complete.
having "pretty graphics" does not magically make the game feature complete.

also, in my personal opinion some half-hearted graphics are a terrible thing to add to any game. i rather have the ascii-graphics which forcefully activate my own imagination which has great graphics.

on the topic of the place-holder-computer-controlled-player-fort: blah blah *repeating what zwei just said* blah blah

But did you consider blah blah blah? I thought not.

[thvaz]

About that October report, it was a heavy drop in donations.

[Cruxador]

About that October report, it was a heavy drop in donations.

To be expected really, since there hasn't been a release in a while.

[Knight Otu]

About that October report, it was a heavy drop in donations.

To be expected really, since there hasn't been a release in a while.

And for that matter, there were a few months last year with a lower total, and this year's February was the second-highest in donations yet far as I can see.

[thvaz]

About that October report, it was a heavy drop in donations.

To be expected really, since there hasn't been a release in a while.

And for that matter, there were a few months last year with a lower total, and this year's February was the second-highest in donations yet far as I can see.

This year so far has been the best ever donations wise, but  September was the first month it dropped below 3k. I hope Toady make an earlier release than the previous cycles to counter this trend.

[Naryar]

so there will be jumping and climbing ? we're gonna need to rethink our fort defense designs...

[Ghills]

It does not have to be perfect, but i do not think it would be catastrophic either - it is mostly just turtle-ish forts without functioning army that will be harmed.

Speaking as someone who plays turtle forts without a functioning army, what you are suggesting would be a total catastrophe and would probably put an end to playing DF for me.   I have tons of strategy games for when I want to have massive battles (which isn't very often), and it's not something I have fun with in DF.

[Talvieno]

It does not have to be perfect, but i do not think it would be catastrophic either - it is mostly just turtle-ish forts without functioning army that will be harmed.

Speaking as someone who plays turtle forts without a functioning army, what you are suggesting would be a total catastrophe and would probably put an end to playing DF for me.   I have tons of strategy games for when I want to have massive battles (which isn't very often), and it's not something I have fun with in DF.

Lighten up - this is Bay12. Within a month we'll have plenty of passive strategies to counter everything Toady does, and boatloads of ways to weaponize it all.

[eux0r]

It does not have to be perfect, but i do not think it would be catastrophic either - it is mostly just turtle-ish forts without functioning army that will be harmed.

Speaking as someone who plays turtle forts without a functioning army, what you are suggesting would be a total catastrophe and would probably put an end to playing DF for me.   I have tons of strategy games for when I want to have massive battles (which isn't very often), and it's not something I have fun with in DF.

maybe you forgot the talk was about leaving your fort alone and doing something else in the world without forcefully abandoning what you built up to that point. it does not mean you cant just play the same way you always did, you just wouldnt be able to return to a functioning fort after adventuring for a year or so, but you cant do that now anyways

[zwei]

so there will be jumping and climbing ? we're gonna need to rethink our fort defense designs...

Generally, yes.

I assume that climbing will only work across one zlevel, so walls will just have to be one level higher and jumping will mean that "vomitariums" will have to be roofed or surrounded with walls.

I guess that moat-n-wall will do just fine, but we shall see about availablility and effect of ladders or whether rough walls will be scalable easily.

[Willfor]

ON GRAPHICS: I believe the reason Toady has been reluctant to work with anyone on an official tileset is because of rights issues. Though the fact that he would prefer to focus on building the mechanics of the game instead of trying to improve the graphics right now does show a priority preference. It doesn't need to be met with a "ASCII IS SUPERIOR" attitude, he's said there will always be an ascii option. Eventually there will be better tile support. These things don't have to be mutually exclusive, and don't have to be a divisive topic.

[therahedwig]

It does not have to be perfect, but i do not think it would be catastrophic either - it is mostly just turtle-ish forts without functioning army that will be harmed.

Speaking as someone who plays turtle forts without a functioning army, what you are suggesting would be a total catastrophe and would probably put an end to playing DF for me.   I have tons of strategy games for when I want to have massive battles (which isn't very often), and it's not something I have fun with in DF.

maybe you forgot the talk was about leaving your fort alone and doing something else in the world without forcefully abandoning what you built up to that point. it does not mean you cant just play the same way you always did, you just wouldnt be able to return to a functioning fort after adventuring for a year or so, but you cant do that now anyways

That kinda reminds me, would the standing production orders not solve a lot of these problems?

I mean, you can already halfway automise the fortress during play if they'd exists. Too little booze? Make Booze. Too little food? Make food/trade food. Too little trading produce, produce trading products.

If you'd apply this to population demographics (always 10% military, 5% stoneworkers, 5% farmers etc.), burrow activation, and when and how levers should be used, you could automise the fort sufficiently for world gen.

Hell, if you could set this up for constructions and mining, a whole new fort building style could be created, where you design the fort, set up the automisation, and leave to adventure for a bit. When you return(and if you set it up correctly) your fort will have basically build itself. You would even be able to run several forts at the same time.

Regular dwarf mode will be more focussed on the fun micromanaging aspects(as the annoying ones will be macromanaged away with the standing production orders), like choosing the perfect wood cutter, looking for the HFS, dealing with foreign emmisaries and of course vampire cluedo.

[therahedwig]

ON GRAPHICS: I believe the reason Toady has been reluctant to work with anyone on an official tileset is because of rights issues. Though the fact that he would prefer to focus on building the mechanics of the game instead of trying to improve the graphics right now does show a priority preference. It doesn't need to be met with a "ASCII IS SUPERIOR" attitude, he's said there will always be an ascii option. Eventually there will be better tile support. These things don't have to be mutually exclusive, and don't have to be a divisive topic.

Actually, as far as I know it's a cluster of problems:

1) The game is HUGE. And he doesn't know how much bigger it'll become. So like the UI, he wants to first know how big the game will become before getting someone on it.
2) Rights issues would be gotten away with if he'd a) commision someone, or if b) there was a clear simple contract set up to Toady owning the copyright to the graphics. (With the artist owning portefolio rights)

The thing with the second one is that a. requires money and b. requires people to sign contracts. Also, Toady may feel b. is kinda skeevy, because it's not actually right to have someone work for free on something you are getting paid for.

In that light I'm making my stonesense graphics free to use as long as the use is directly related to Dwarf Fortress. That way anyone can use them to make their Dwarf Fortress related website look nice, or use them in their Let's Plays.

[CLA]

Hell, if you could set this up for constructions and mining, a whole new fort building style could be created, where you design the fort, set up the automisation, and leave to adventure for a bit. When you return(and if you set it up correctly) your fort will have basically build itself. You would even be able to run several forts at the same time.

• set up automation parameters in fort mode
• Save them like templates
• attract a king in one fort
• enables "conquest mode"
• You now control not only an adventurer or a single fort, but a whole dwarven civilization that gives embark orders (send 7 or more AI controlled dwarves to build <auto template 1> fort here, <auto template 4> fort there), and requests good to be made and traded
• set up an army
• conquer the world
• Spoiler (click to show/hide)

  unlock fourth mode: interplanetary conquest with !!SCIENCE!! powered adamantine spaceships with magma cannons

Dwarf Fortress 2.0

[Tenebrais]

I figure having automated fortress processes/fortress retirement ties in to reintroducing a better economy. The rest of the world's entities are run economically, and money is a good motivator for having dwarves work needed jobs without prompting.