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[Mel_Vixen]

Assuming trees yield bark when processed will we see it required for tanning? I only ask because I remember you mentioning it a long time ago.

Heh if so we can have useful Cork-oaks later on for the Human Wineries. At the same time Mamothtrees would need soft bark. Seriously the stuff is almost fluffy and ~15cm thick or so. Excreting resin would be cool too, some of them are even usefull like incense or highly flameable. (Jeffrey Pine says wikipedia. Something about "Exploding resin distilleries")

[Toady One]

Thanks to misko27, CaptainArchmage, Rockphed, MrWiggles, Putnam, Knight Otu, Shinotsa, Cruxador, Neonivek and Talvieno for answering questions.  I also skipped some questions that were a little too off-track or suggestion-based.

will the sneak update fix the thing that people dodge your attacks even if they dont see you and dont notice you if you hit them?

Will there be combat bonuses, such as increased hit chance, for attacking while undetected? I've always wanted to backstab a goblin.

How do attacks from a stealth situation work? In other words, if you sneak up behind a goblin and then aerate his kidneys, what happens? Do you get improved attack opportunities like with unconscious targets? Does the goblin (or your attack) make a sound that could be heard by other goblins, and if so is it effected by the Ambusher (or another) skill?

Yeah, and it'll be fairly obscene for a truely undetected attack bonus-wise.  Bad news for a bad goblin.  If you aren't good at it, you might lose your initiative and give the goblin a reaction moment (since there is a pre-attack period now), but I think the chances of that are non-existent the way things are set up now, if you aren't detected when you start to attack.  I haven't done much with actual combat sounds yet, as opposed to movement sounds, but when I do that I'm going to be keeping stealth in mind (ie, it'll be a sure thing that combat noises won't make stealth pointless).

What about 'social' tracking, like asking shopkeepers if they've seen a one-eyed man pass through lately?  Is that planned to be part of this?  Will bounty-hunters be able to track you down in a city by talking to people who've seen you, and so on?

Yeah, we want to get to that -- we were going to start by having you talk to refugees, rescued captives and people you capture.  I'm not sure we'll be able to get to capturing people or not, but we should have the other stuff.  We also wanted people hunting you to do collective punishment when they are hunting you, and I imagine that'd have some interrogation to direct them to you if they've talked to you recently.

My question first, of course, will we be able to take diplomacy far beyond "I want this, I have this" with friendly civs? If our fortress is besieged by another army, would it be possible to send a courier or have a treaty in place where if we're attacked, they'll come help? Would it have drawbacks, such as requiring a certain number of militiadwarves to be ready to go to the other civ's rescue should they be attacked?

Secondly, will towns gain any new buildings and/or see a rise in other professions among peasants? Each arc could give rise to new buildings, I've always seen the Economy arc giving towns and keeps treasury buildings, heavily guarded "banks" that weigh heavily on what a town is worth. Is there anything like this planned, such as barracks?

There aren't going to be big diplomacy changes going in for this release, and I'm not working on human towns so much as the other races this time.

With the worldgen stuff going into play, are we going to get in-game updates as to territory changes and the world map? For example, when a caravan turns up they may inform you of worldwide events such as "the human town derpderp has grown to become a city"?

It'll take time to get each different world gen mechanic up in-play, but we've got some new horrifying stuff going on, and one of the ideas is to make sure you know about it, in all modes.  Liaisons and caravans are a good way to do that in fort mode.

What kind of incentives might there be to stay on the roads?

People mentioned safety and the eventual difficulty of traveling through rough terrain, which should actually effect your movement speed at some point (both locally and on the travel map).  There's also the benefit of orienting yourself -- you can pretty safely assume that the road will take you where you want to go, even if you can't see any landmarks or otherwise figure out where you are.  This is harder to simulate in a game with a grid.  Unless I switch the direction of the screen when you are lost (something I've considered, and which we did for other reasons in abandoned forts before), you'll know which way to go even without a road, more or less.

Is there a hard limit to the amount of attacks that you can preform at once? If so, what is that limit? Or is it based off of a stat?

Right now it's reasonably silly, and you can just keep stacking it up.  The idea was to penalize this in a few ways -- taking away power bonuses since the whole body can't be put behind multiple blows in general, and making it harder to hit with simultaneous attacks as a matter of stats/skills.  I don't think there'll ever be a hard cap, aside from not allowing you to double up with attacks that use the same parts, although we'll eventually have to make it realize that punching and elbowing with the same arm doesn't make much sense, for example.

Will the travel/regional map be available in fortress mode so we can spot nearby armies, caravans, dignitaries, ambushes (maybe only at the last few tiles), etc?

When it matters more you'll get the map.  Probably when you have hill dwarves and are sending out scouts.

On the topic of road safety, will caravans always travel with a large enough number of guards to protect them, or will there be guards from the different civs patrolling the roads to keep them safer?

Also, now that goods are tracked from town to town, are caravan goods actually going to be tracked from their origin to their destination? For example, if a caravan carrying dwarven metalwork is ambushed on its way to a human town the mountainhome, will the bandit camp be filled with +steel short sword+ and ?lead barrel?? Would those same goods have showed up in human shops had the caravan arrived, or would they just be stored in the warehouses?

Not sure how caravan safety works out.  Seems like a "safe" kingdom would have unguarded caravans, if they really don't have to worry about bandits or theft or monsters or anything, since the caravan owner would save money that way.  There's the matter of actually organizing the caravans and making them think about stuff like that, and we aren't there yet.

Yeah, that level of tracking is in the cards now.  We already have the space allocated for it, so it just needs to be done when the caravans are moving, for the bandits.  Getting things to arrive at precise shops is more complicated.

Toady are you planning on redoing Titans at a certain point or adding something that can see if a Titan is worthwhile or not or what? Since a lot of the titans generated couldn't fight their way out of a paper bad (no really, the paper bag would probably kill the Titan)

It's certainly not good that it doesn't create monsters of reliable difficulty at this point.  Once titans matter more I imagine it could be looked at.

How are we going to measure our deeds? Interests will still be global among entities, like being a worldwide hero due to a few local kills? How can we make sure that we're dealing with the right entity as soon as we're about to claim our 'reward'?

The last question is paired with the assumption that sites, now that they're going to be claimed by multiple (and even conflictive) entities, might contain groups of people that could give you an umprompted beating in response of your meddling in local affairs. Lets say that you arrive to a town near a former-hamlet-now-debris&gore, where you're told that X goblin entity made it; you manage to murder the entire goblin entity, and back in the town you enter to a house populated by bandits, who were also enemies of the (majority of the) hamlet. Will they despise you for helping an enemy? Can bandits and goblin be somehow 'allies' if they share some common goals, or are we not that into AI yet?

In part, you measure your deeds by how many of your loved ones are still alive.  We've slowly arriving at a place where there are real consequences for action and inaction.  There's still an opinion of you based on entity standing, but the main difference this time is probably going to be how a given site's population can have different entity views from person to person -- that isn't all in yet, and we'll get significantly more interesting when I get to succession before the release.

We're not up to any more subtle AI yet.  Things'll get tangled with succession, and that's good.  Then we'll see how long the AI behaves bizarrely while I try to clean things up.

Will there also be some kind of exposition for the various characters you meet?

Not much of anything new this time around that relates to specific people.  Maybe stuff that relates to what they think about who occupies the town, but not enough to make them feel like individuals.  The stuff that they drop about their family members, for instance, is pretty stilted, and it'll have to get better.

Could this mean that there's an intention to change the Fortress' beginning paragraph as well? Or it wouldn't be that relevant in the next release?

I think the opening paragraph could very will change, but the important part is pre-embark -- the invasions that come at your fortress are going to depend on where you embark and it'll have to be clear about that somewhere in advance.

From my understanding based on your recent reply, tracking the activities of entities outside your fortress or adventure will be a more-or-less constant process. What sort of performance hit should we be expecting from this, now and in the future?

I don't think it'll be a problem.  Time in fortress mode is compressed, so that'll be the place to test it out, but there's no indication at this point that the new thoughts that map critters have at times matter that much.  Most of the things critters do now, like moving as armies, were already active, but not used much, and putting a slight extra load on that hasn't mattered.  A giant army moving doesn't really have any overhead at all at this point, once they have their goal.

Will the new version be save-compatible?

It becomes more difficult as we move along.  There's an awful lot to account for, and I think it might be best not to burn a lot of time on it when not many of the features can be brought into play no matter how it works.

Now that you're going to deal with the missing goblin sites, are we going to see demon sites changed in the upcoming release with regards to Dwarf Fortress mode? Are we going for a standardised or randomised messing-up of the world at this point, and in how many ways can the world be messed up by these end-of-worldgen events?

What do you mean with Demon Sites? Just HFS or something different?

Also, does Dwarf Sites include Hill Dwarves?

I don't think the overall metaphysics/creation structure is changing much yet.  That'll be tackled as its own major push later on when it is more justified.  The new demon sites are more adv modeish, and not related to the dwarf mode HFS sites.

The first hill dwarf appearance seems quite likely.

Toady, what are the basic requirements that you have for making a living world? Theoretically they'd be something along the lines of grow, repopulate after disaster, gather and use resources, and adapt to various conditions placed upon it by the player which are similar to the basic characteristics of a living organism, but I am sure you have some specific goals for yourself even if they are to be expanded upon or refined at a later date.

The baseline for this release is for the world to repair itself from player damage, pretty much.  I'm not going to worry about resource use this time...  basic food is still possible.  So I need repopulation, AI site reclaim, births, new marriages and succession.  That's not really living so much as just surviving, he he he.  The army stuff and elements of succession probably count more as living -- changes are important.  Having goblins take over sites is a good first step going in this time.  Having the player surprised by whose in control when they arrive somewhere is good, and having the player be able to exercise some control over this is good (for now that'll be limited to people you kill and rescue, pretty much).

Will we see tree felling accidents?

will trees fall when cut? if so, do the fall in a certain direction? and if so, can one tree damage another or a building?

Will dwarves be capable of chopping down select portions of tree trunks, rather than chopping the entire tree down at once?
Assuming they don't decompose into logs like constructions when left without a support: will trees fall to the side, or use the current physics code and fall straight down? If the latter, will this create a cave-in effect? ("A section of the cavern has collapsed!")

How will cutting these trees work, will it work sort of like the de-construction of walls? Will they fall over? Not with a silly cave-in message I'm shure!

Will the new, larger trees be dangerous to chop down in any way? What, if any, safety precautions will be needed to ensure safe harvesting, both of wood and (hopefully) fruit?

Will felled trees just leave behind multiple logs like trees do now? Or will they leave a "construction" behind - i.e. a trunk with the same length the tree was high(which have to be further processed)?
Can we then, in adventure mode fell a tree to create a makeshift bridge to cross a river safely?

Will cutting down multi-tile trees right where the tree goes into the ground cause the cave-in code to take effect, or do you intend to handle this differently?

How will damage by falling trees be handled (especially considering the multi-tile aspect, as certain parts will weigh less presumably, but have the same velocity)? Will they fall as one tree, or will it shatter? Will it just poof and be on the ground as it is now, or will falling be a more gradual process? And what will occur to creatures on the tree? Will they be thrown, or cling to its branches?

Assuming trees yield bark when processed will we see it required for tanning?

There won't be an animation for falling trees, but I'm assuming there will be a direction when I get there.  There'll probably have to be trouble, but it would be silly to have a too-dangerous-to-use lumber industry.  Perhaps dwarves that are unqualified won't check the space where the tree falls, even if the targets have a chance to dodge, but we'll see how it ends up.  I imagine after the tree falls it'll just be separate logs.  Later we might have more processing, but I don't want to go on an nth-level detour just yet.  I talk a bit in the coppicing answer about whether there will be one tile tree mining, but I don't really know.  Probably.  Felling of trees shouldn't working like that though, since it would look sort of unrealistic and silly.  Not sure about creatures on the tree...  perhaps they'll just be thrown in the direction of the fall.

Since demons have sites, will all demons have their own sites that they inhabit, or will there still be law-makers, lords, and specifically, outcasts? In other words, will there still be a variety of possible ways for a demon to inhabit the world?

I'm not doing the actual underworldish planar stuff yet, so we're not going to super cool town.  Just some fun stuff.

We might be able to get underwater sites out to sea or in lakes in the next release. Is this going to be on the table in the near future or next release, given that you're dealing with sites now?

That might be a bit much for this time.

Is optimization done as the game is developed, and do you personally think the game is getting more or less efficient as development progresses?

Yeah, quite a bit is done as the game is developed.  The efficiency goes up and down.  The last several releases were faster during play than in many years previous, but world gen has become slower.

How tall can we expect multi-tile trees to be?

It's not completely resolved.  Right now they can get up to 10, but I'd prefer it if they can get taller.  You don't want to allocate too much sky though, since sky is a waste for the most part.

Can we get a clarification on this, Toady? Were Ocean Titans taken out? If not, do they have Shrines placed currently or is there some system in place to prevent the strange situation of an inaccessible shrine sitting out there somewhere, presumably on the seafloor?

I don't remember getting rid of them, but if they don't have shrines they won't be findable, and I don't think it does undersea shrines.  Like boats and everything else, it's just sea stuff out in the far distance somewhere.

I'm sure I'm not the first to notice this. Surface Rivers in low lying layers cut through higher layer cliffs hills rather then detour around them.

Is this side effect of the world gen process, or is caused locally when the region is loaded in Dwarf mode/adventure mode?

The main problems occur where rivers meet and the two branches are coming from places with different elevations (the waterfalls).  There are lots of things that need to be reconciled to avoid flat-out spillage or intersection with the underground layers without pushing them too low, and the rough solutions now lead to some strangeness.  I'm not sure when I'll be trying to handle it with more finesse -- maybe when I do actual hills and canyons.

How far reaching will a personality rewrite be? Will it just be used for things like how sentient things react to various happenings, or will it also be noticeable in terms of each individual's personality? For example, as opposed to everyone having the *nearly* same greetings and ways interacting with you, it would change based on their personality. Your companion may be very narcissistic or there's a peasant in your town that speaks very cruelly, and the way they speak/act can reflect this.

Conversation text specifically is a nightmare, but it's also very important.  I'm not quite sure how much it'll be reflected this time, but I need to continue working on it since it is the best window we have and I want less of the work to reside solely under the hood this time.  The underlying rewrite is going to be pretty extensive, even for this release.

If so, will you tackle ground vegetation differences like fields of grass or forest floor moss?

Since you've talked about grass under the tree cover should be dry, doe s this mean we'll be seeing a change to say under growth and forest debris? Will this impact forest fires?

Will the new vegetation changes include the undergrowth you've mentioned before?

I want to deal with the lower light in forests, and the differences down below, but we'll see what we get this time.  I'm not sure at this point exactly what's going to happen.  The undergrowth is being dealt with now as I drop fruit/leaves from trees etc., and I have no idea if we'll be seeing things like movement rate decreases from shrubs and so on.

Inside dark fortresses will we find captive children to free? Will we receive quests where someones child has been kidnapped by goblins and we must rescue them?

Yeah, they are there.  I'm not sure about the quest structure.  On the one hand, I'd like to move away from specific quests.  On the other hand, sometimes they are just appropriate and this feels like a case where someone would actually ask you to do something specific that has a strict starting and end point and all that.

Will the new goblin sites be vulnerable to attacks from Forgotten Beasts, and other cavern-based monsters? What sort of defenses will they have against them?

As goblins breach the underground now,will they be attacked by forgotten beasts? There will be a chance now that forgotten beasts enter in play during world gen?

I haven't changed the world gen stuff for gobs.  Next pass on that'll be when I do the non-player dwarf fortresses, when they interact with the layers.  Will I go back to world gen and add some stuff?  Dunno, probably not at this point.  Having site attacks happen in adventure mode with forgotten beasts will likely wait until the dragons are running around.

In dark fortresses, will there be watch towers at the entrances to fortress in the cavern layers as well as on the surface?

Will goblins be able to attack your fortress from the cavern layers now?

I haven't gotten around to make the cavern layer part very interesting, and I haven't made goblins siege from below.

Will you be developing Kobolds soon?

It'll make this release.  Other than that I'm not sure on the timing.

Will we ever be able to edit the types of buildings that will appear in towns as well as the "dungeons" inside of it, possibly having it external such as a site_dwarf file. or having "plans" built into the game like now but with the buildings customisable in the entity files, such as the options to build towers or not, or to have sewers or not at a certain city value or population

Things tend to move out to the raws as I feel more comfortable with them.  Once I'm done with all of the sites and have more an idea of what I'm dealing with and what I'll be dealing with, we'll probably see more things in there.

Toady, would you mind clarifying how you're fixing the "open areas filled with dozens of goblins"? Are you spreading things out to make sense, or deliberately making it a little more game-y, or something entirely different?

It all goes together.  The game's concept of goblin sites could easily be one giant communal living chamber or something, but we have to make decisions that don't make the game dull.

Are people in towns going to have jobs in the next release, as it appears goblins will? Or will they continue to stand idly in their houses?

It's the same as the human towns.  Professions without work.

How tightly bound is the DF world to a grid? Is it actually a floating point position based world displayed through a grid, or is it more so connected to the grid on a mathematical level. If it isn't bound by the grid are they any current considerations to alter game displays in that direction?

It's pretty much all grid-based.  Projectiles and mine carts are the exception right now.

will trolls be part of goblin forts? If so, how will they be found in the dark fortress?

Yeah, they are down there.  Right now they are in the troll shearing areas.

Do watchtowers offer any advantage in spotting intruders? Or are they just cosmetic for now?

Also, do mounds and trenches etc... offer any advantages?

I haven't done a height advantage -- it's trickier with the map as it stands, though perhaps I could extend their arcs lower down or something.  There is an advantage to the specific configuration of the watch towers though, in that they can see down the trenches where you might otherwise have an easy time sneaking.  Mounds don't matter so much defensively -- we don't have armies attacking yet.

Are the plans for same-race militant and otherwise conflicts?

Yeah.  They happen between different civilizations already in world gen, though they are more rare.  We're going to have more trouble and politics within a given civilization at some point, but the larger world questions are taking priority for the moment.  After the sweeping stuff is in, we can get more nuanced with it.  In-play succession, which is going in this release, sets the stage for some of the most important conflicts within a single civ.

Will (rescued) prisoners behave any different than henchmen, at least in terms of recklesness and being unable to follow you under certain circumstances, like rivers? If there's a rewrite for the companions (which I'm sure it is, rendering doable all those sneaking quests) can you tell them to leave your group, or will they have motives to leave?

Yeah, it should end up that way, hopefully this time.  Children you rescue shouldn't behave like rabid beasts.  I guess your regular companions shouldn't act like rabid beasts either.  It is a process.  You'll need to be able to tell your companions to wait at the very least for this release.

With the addition of sites for other races--including those troll-shearing pits and other economic buildings--are we going to see some more fleshed-out out-of-the-box playability in vanilla DF for the non-dwarf races in fortress mode a la Kobold Camp?

Those are larger projects than just having the non-player sites around.  I don't think it'll be good to open up another can of worms that size any time soon.

Will NPC adventurers ever bring back abducted kids to player forts?

This made me think of taverns and inns.  I'm not sure when there will be lots of non-player adventures occurring.  The main issue is the ensure that adventure mode is not ruined by them, but that applies less when you are running a fort, especially where it concerns the fort's children.

Will dwarves now use the lesser nobilties in world-gen? Will dwarven mountain hall be listed as barony, duchy, etc? And Finally, Will we see Forced administarters ruling over conqured sites?

I'm not sure about the administrators, but the others will show up.

Are we going to see stealth missions?  Reading the devlog, all I can think about is Metal Beard Solid: Goblin Eater.

I'm still hoping to move away from specific stated missions entirely, but there are now situations where directed stealth can save you a lot of trouble when applied for an extended period, which is roughly equivalent I think (current examples: saving a captive, assassinating a general, getting to a demon).

How will you handle expanding player fortress that have been retired? I know player fortresses can be a mess of hallways to nowhere and vast open areas, unlike the computer-generated fortresses.

So what are the things that need to happen to let Player Created Forts retire?

Site expansion in general is an annoying open question, and for player fortresses it is basically a disaster.  I'm not sure when I'm going to tangle with site expansion (for the basic birth/repopulation, things just need to return to "normal"), but when I do, if there are former player forts, things'll probably get pretty ugly.

For retiring player forts, I think I just need to come to terms with the great explosion of death that will await the first adventurer that arrives at one, and then we'll be cool.  Really, the main thing I need is these non-player forts I'm working on, so I know what framework needs to be placed over the player ones for them to have sense made of them.

Will we be able to damage roots by mining nearby and trampling?

I still have to set them up, but mining should certainly cause trouble for root tiles.  Dunno about trampling.  It might be too disruptive, or even inaccurate, depending on what sorts of floor-style root tiles we get.

Do you have plans for flowers as a resource of some kind (decorative or otherwise,) or are they just an aesthetic choice to make the grass pretty? Does their coincidence with Elven sites indicate that Elves will have more flowers around than anyone else, or is it just "I'm doing trees and fruits and stuff, I'll throw in flowers quick?"

There will be uses for them over time, but they are just aesthetic right now (you will be able to pick them as an adventurer).  Doing fruit required flowers on the moral level as much as anything.

With fruit going in will you make adventurers able to gather fruit and other plants for food straight from the source?

Yeah.

So, given that in real life many trees exceed 20 ft in height (and in jungle biomes, far more), does this mean that we're going to be seeing these multi-tile trees popping up regularly in fortress mode across many biomes as well? Are their canopies going to be just single tiles or multiple tiles on multiple Z levels?

They are all over and can be quite large (the screenshot probably went up after this question, where you can see the canopies).

[Toady One]

We know that, after a time, children kidnapped by Goblins become Goblin-naturalized, to the point of even leading armies against their original civ. Now that abducted children are locatable and rescuable, have you put any thought into how long they have to be saved before they become willing little Goblins themselves (at which point I'd imagine they would no longer want to be rescued)? Would you have this timeframe vary based on certain personality traits of the child abducted, or their age? More importantly - would kids rescued from Goblin civs after a significant length of time be changed in any way, be it in terms of picking up a skill like Shearing from slave labor, or another trait they might acquire from the ordeal?

In world gen, the current rule is that they have to reach adulthood, I think (though I could be misremembering).  I'm happy enough with that, though I guess ideally it would be more fun if your captives reacted differently so you couldn't just treat the entire return trip the same way each time.  They don't currently do anything there, but if as historical figures it gave them jobs, they'd acquire skills.  We're still not really sure what they do with them, in terms of work or indoctrination, so for now they just hang out in cells.

When it comes to sites and modding will it be a matter of deciding if your custom civ uses one of the preset ones or are they more customisable?
What level of customisation are you planning for in future / What is your ideal level and what level do you expect to achieve?
What would happen in world gen if you gave humans goblin style sites? Would the lack of farms lead to starvation?
If a civ conquers a site that wouldn't support their needs how does settling work?

It still works the same way.  Once I'm happy with all the sites and things are working well, then it'll be time to move things out to the text files.  It'd probably be a happy time to do it when human towns start to look different.  Right now, I don't even know what I want of the basic races and having to update text files would slow me down too much.  It's similar to the random creatures, though those are farther along.  Ideally you'd be able to fiddle with all kinds of architecture and specifics and mix and match every element.  I think humans with goblin sites would probably still survive on butchering animals, or even by fake farms if the game just doesn't know what's going on.  Conveniently, goblins are the only ones with any fight in them right now.  When I do human conquests and have food use in play, that case'll be handled, but it's a bit of trick since it'll either have to involve site expansion or caravans.

Will we have trees massive enough that the trunk alone spans several tiles? Will we then be able to carve fortifications, stairs, etc in the trunk?
Will trees regrow if we prune them? Can we use the fallen leaves as fertilizer?

The trunks can be large.  Not sure what the specific options'll be for carving or other uses yet.

Will we have orchards in dwarf mode then? Grapes and proper wine?

He he he, "dwarves with *outdoor* *orchards*" is kind of a double-barreled fundamentally bizarre concept, so I'm not sure I'll be racing for that.  On the other hand, doing anything with underground vegetation along the same lines would pretty much let you do it above ground (if you are some kind of shaved-faced freak), so I wouldn't rule it out.  I doubt you'd ever compete in global trade with the people that live in forests under the sun and so on.

How moddable will the following be: tree shape, size, quantity of fruit bearing
Will all trees have different defined varieties of leaves/petals/etc? For example, pine trees will have pine needles, oak trees will have oak leaves, palm trees will have palm fronds.
Will the varieties of tree produce have different specific uses? IE sap from a maple tree could be made into a syrup, while syrups made from saps taken from other trees would be inedible.
With the implementation of the other new sites, will this in turn allow for more variety with human sites, since the code has been expanded upon?
Will trees legitimately spread through methods such as seeds in fruit, or will they still just spawn?

As for the first few lines, yeah, all pretty good there.  Haven't done anything with sap.  I haven't expanded human sites, but yeah, the potential increases as I add non-human sites, but not really modding wise for this time.  I haven't gone down into actual seeding yet.

We're getting fruits and flowers, so will we have seeding patterns too?
With the addition of fruits and flowers on trees, will animals such as elephants be able to browse trees?
Will roots be able to damage structures within your fortress?
Are all trees going to use the new multi-tile code?
Some real life trees, such as Baobabs, store large quantities of water inside their trunks. Will some large trees be filled with replenishing water?

No specific reproduction information at this point.  Not doing tree browsing yet.  The vast majority of trees don't do the massive taproot thing, so I'm not sure if any interesting things will happen with roots, but if you are playing like a hill dwarf and mucking about in the soil, you might run into trouble with roots, especially if you are shallow.  All trees but saplings will use multitile code.  I think trees at higher elevations should end up properly stunted, but might still get 2 tiles tall to distinguish them from saplings.  Don't have special plans for the odd cases, aside from things like basic saguaro shapes and things like that.

Will invaders be linked to the new elven and goblin sites?
And if so, will this have any effect on sieges? Variety of unit types, historical figures, etc?

Yeah, I don't expect we'll have any generated armies after this release (aside from underground animal people if it brings some of them out).  I don't think that'll have a broadly noticeable effect yet, though it will impact equipment and who comes in subtle ways at this point.

Will Bamboo "grass" turn to Bamboo "Trees"? Also will we have multitile "Bushes" and "Hedges" like ribes, Hazelnuts or Hibiscus?
Will certain Trees/bushes/plants breed by other means then fruits and seeds? Like over the Rhizome by vegetative reproduction (natures own cloning) etc.?

There's more of a framework for that now, but I don't think I'm going to get further into it this time around.  There are memory/processor issues with allowing z-multi-tile independent vegetation on every x/y tile.  It can't use the full vegetation framework, so it can't be tracked as closely.  Reproduction is still all abstract.

Will tree roots be multi-tile, and if so, will they remain and decay after the tree is chopped down?

They are, and they'll still be there.  I don't know if they'll decay in any particular way at this point.  That doesn't mean they can't be cleared.

Will you be making underground trees and mushrooms multi-tile as well, and if so how are you dealing with cavern space requirements for these?

Yeah.  I'm not sure what you mean about cavern space requirements.

now there are armies and nightcreatures are traveling through the overworld, will this mean the megabeasts will leave their lair this or next update?

I'm not sure when the megabeasts will be activated.  I haven't done it yet.  Having the night creatures roaming around outside their lairs seems to bring it closer, but that behavior seems a little too flippant for the bigger ones.

Will climbing require special equipment, like grappling hooks, spiked shoes, picks and so on?

With this new climbing mechanics, will we see those high cliffs back again?

Will there be a difference between climbing rough and smooth walls? If some invaders become capable of climbing into an aboveground fortress, will smoothing the walls (or constructing smooth walls) prevent them from doing this?

Now that climbing is going in, will we be getting ladders?

Will creatures in Dwarf Fortress mode and/or Adventure mode be able to jump across one-tile gaps at the same z-level?

With the multitile trees and jumping implemented, does this mean that there will be creatures that live in trees. and will it be possible to sneak pasts guards through trees??

Will entities be able to jump over more than one tile?
Will you need some distance to run before jumping?
Will you be able to jump into somebody as offensive maneuver?
When climbing, will you be able to jump vertically to another adjacent (opposite) wall and try to snag to it?
Will holding on ledges be part of climbing-jumping.
Will climbing introduce ladders and ropes for climbing?

Will jumping now be reflected as a skill? Will fortmode dwarves jump, and under what circumstances?

Will climbing be implemented in any other respect, or will it just be restricted to trees for now? What, if any, mechanical differences will there be between climbing and going up a flight of stairs/walking?

How does combat while climbing work? (Can we throw things while climbing?)
Can we sneak while climbing?

Which brings up my question- Will Climbing be enabled in Fortress mode? And will there be critters that live in the trees, aside from elves?

Do certain animals climb trees now, too? Birds' nests, etc? Will we see a [CLIMBER] tag in this release?

With the new climbing mechanics are we going to see cave spiders climbing cave walls?

We aren't there yet, so I can't be really specific about climbing and jumping.  Jumps should be able to pass over gaps on the ground, and running should matter (especially now that we have sprinting).  Being able to move through tiles with a jump will force us to deal with creature collisions, but I'm not sure what that's going to mean.  Dunno about fort mode jumping -- pathing is as usual the problem there with any movement changes, so we have to be careful.  I think jumping makes sense as a skill...  if the Olympics are any indication, there should be several skills, he he he.

I think you should be able to attempt to climb most things.  Climbing smooth walls equipment free as a human seems unlikely.  Adding equipment at this point is one of those tempting things.  Who knows what will end up happening...  perhaps nothing, perhaps another obscenity.  Climbing up something is different from going up a flight of stairs because when you are climbing you can fall and break something.  Not sure about sneaking while climbing -- you can sneak in the sense of avoiding detection from vision arcs and moving silently, but not sure about lowering your profile.  Even less sure about combat and the exact mechanics of climbing -- does it track exactly holds and prevent attacks with those?  Unsure.  Also unsure about climbing animals, though they are obviously cool.  Fort mode climbing has same problems as jumping -- pathing issues and how they are resolved.  Jumping vertically and ledge hanging seems fine -- I don't know much about rock climbing and how long you can support your weight on a ledge with a crappy hold though.  I'd like to have high cliffs back, and climbing was the main obstacle there, but I need to continue to be a bit careful there.  The old situation with cliffs everywhere was still bad -- might have to wait for the 3D veins and landforms and things.  I like ladders and ropes...  I don't even recollect at this point (burned out as I am since this is the last answer I'm typing up) what the block was for getting rope ladders in before, so I'll have to see what happens there.

ToadyOne, how much, if at all, do you enjoy us trying to soak as much information as possible from your Dev Logs?

I think it's cool when people are enjoying things.

Will the update to trees also include dangerous plants like giant fly-traps and strangling vines?

I doubt I'll get to anything like that this time around, but at least we've got a framework now that'll allow specific tiles dedicated to that kind of thing.  It only gets us part of the way there though.

When you say which branches are safe to climb on and which aren't does this take size into account?

That should make it in, but it'll still be a very coarse setup, since there are only levels of branch tile.

Do all trees grow the same way?

Nope.  There are various parameters in the raws.

I love how you do this, it gives us nice dense forrests if done right but i wonder if you include the Physical aspects in your growth algorithm. Given that you have only one set of Rules (atm) i could imagine that respecting stuff like the Tensile and compressive Strength or the solid density of the different wood-materials makes still a difference in the outcome (for example if certain breaking points are reached).

There are parameters in the raws, but I think it would be a rabbit hole to look at the specific numbers and try to form an algorithm around that.

Will Building be able to be constructed on Trees at all, if so, what building under what circumstances.

The elves will likely have some things up there, and I assume that'll carry over.

How will you balance the wood industry now that we have bigger trees?

It remains to be seen, since I haven't cut down any trees yet.  There will be more wood with each tree, but trees will grow more slowly now.  That might be enough, but we'll have to run out some forts for a period of time to see if it swings too far one way or the other.

When you say "it can all be changed in the raws" do you mean the graphical representation only or the growth parameters as well?

How much control over plant growth will we have in the raws? Will it be fairly basic, as now, or will we have things like MAX_HEIGHT, CANOPY_SHAPE and LIMB_DENSITY?

The growth parameters are all in there.

When you say it can all be changed in the raws, does that extend to the tiles that are used to represent certain parts of the tree? I'm down with what you've got there mostly, but the "1/4"s are distracting, being readable numbers thrown into the mix like that. I think it's because number tiles have been otherwise reserved for fluid levels.

Yeah, you can change each of the tiles.  The d_init file has the defaults, and the raws have any special tiles for specific trees.  For the 1/4th you'd probably just need to change the d_init one.

Do trees grow in increments, or all at once? If the former, how many seasons/years (on average) would it take for a tree to grow to its full height from a sapling?

The trees grow in increments, though the jumps in trunk width are by necessity pretty sudden.  I still have to look up data on tree growth rates, but I'm planning on keeping it as realistic as I can, then seeing how annoying logging is, and revamping one thing or another from there.

Will, similar to grazers, certain animals require leaves and/or fruits now?

Not now, but having trees like this should help us get there.

How does the tree "decide" which tiles to use when its trunk increases from 1x1 to 2x2?

It's random, based on what is available, but when it goes to 3x3 it tries to recenter back on where it was, so the tree doesn't migrate too much.

Do you regenerate the whole tree/branch when it grows?

How will you decide when a tree dies, due to damage? Do we need to cut out a whole layer of trunk? Perhaps only ring it? What about 1 tile removal of a 3x3 trunk, either in the center or at the edge? what about root damage, how much is enough to kill a tree?

Toady, is partial cutting (pollarding) of a tree going to be possible?  If tree-topping of this sort is possible, will the tree continue to grow?

With trees presumably taking longer to grow will things like coppicing and other tree management be possible? Also what impact will this have on tree growth?
In what ways do you plan on players being able to influence tree growth? Bonsai trees being an extreme example of what I mean.

It grows out tile by tile, in general, so it shouldn't do too-weird things with existing branches.  Trees don't need any particular tiles at this point to stay alive, and I'm not sure in the end what I'll get to there.

I haven't done the interface for cutting trees yet, so it remains to be seen exactly what'll happen -- if a tree doesn't die when its upper tiles are removed, and you can partially mine out wood in a tree, then coppicing would basically have happened (since the tree would grow back tile by tile from the trunk).

Aside from boxing in trees so they'd kind of grow around obstructions, I don't have specific plans for influencing tree growth at this point.

Will foliage be burnable? If so, will you fix fire to spread across z-levels?

It'll burn, and I'm sure it'll be fun to make it look cool.

what are the ideas for the new kobold sites?

I don't want to commit to anything on those yet, other than something being done.  We have various ideas, but we still need to specify some of them, and some of them probably require mechanics I don't want to burn too much time on (as has been done with the trees for elves).

What happens if a tree is going to grow outwards or upwards, but something is in the way, be it a building or construction or creature?

The way it is set up now, trees will just go around.  I haven't done anything with slow pushing/deforming or anything like that -- we don't have fine gradations to work with.

Will trees be affected by the wind/weather/storms?

Not at this point.  We need to do more with wind first.  Then I'll be able to simulate the annoying power-killing wind storms we get all the time out here.

What happens when you cause the part of the ground the tree rests upon to cave in? Does the tree remain intact?

You mean like floating in space?  The trees are tied to the map, so they won't float.

are the proportions of the trees weve seen so far already the desired picture or are tile dimensions yet to be applied for the trees to be what you want them to be?

It'll depend on the kind of tree more than what you saw there.

Once fruites are added, possibly for a later update, will we ever get quests to get frutes from good or evil regions? " I require a putrid apple from the swamps of longbottoms, will you acquire it for me? "

It's a reasonable enough thing.  There's also the whole alchemy/herbalism-type questions, where people including yourself mix all kinds of creepy stuff for nefarious purposes.  We'll have to see how it plays out.  Certainly having various flowers and leaves adds a draw there, programming-wise, but there's only so much time for detours.

can growths drop down on their own or must they always be harvested manually?

Growths will drop on their own, but due to the amount, it'll store them as a ground contaminant somewhat like blood.  If it's a growth like fruit, there'll need to be a step from there to collect them for eating, perhaps, and I haven't thought about how that might work yet.

Toady, now that we have trees and Leaves, flowers and such will they be part of the of the "Art". I could see elves using many floral ornaments on theyr items.

It's a reasonable thing, but I haven't figured out exactly how far I'm going to go with the flower items that now exist.  Elf sites are coming very soon, so we'll see!

Do leaves count as items? Are they collectable or will they fall to the ground as a 'contaminant' during autumn?

Will/How is tree-related debris handled? Fallen branches, falling leaves/flowers, falling fruit, etc.
Can trees die of natural causes?

I'm working through that now, and they'll be stored as a contaminant that can be picked up in part and at that point turned into a leaf item.  The leaf item already exists (from quarry leaves), so it shouldn't be a problem.  A leaf picked directly from a tree will also become an item (rather than a body contaminant), unless you've done something bizarre like making a tree with liquid leaves.

I'm not sure about natural causes.  It knows the ages of trees, but there aren't any diseases.

Do the fruits contain seeds of the trees? Will we see seeds for all plants now? Do new plants only grow where seeds are? Will animals disperse seeds?
Does tree growth depend on fertility of the ground? Can we influence that with fertilizer? Possibly order trees to be grown somewhere specific by planting a seed?

I haven't done the seeds yet.  I'm not sure exactly what'll happen there.  It would be really cool to be able to plant trees.  We'll see.  I haven't messed with the soil.

Will elves again send their emmissaries to request logging limits?

As far as I know, that's just a garden variety bug.  I'm not sure when it'll be fixed, or if I'll just wait for general diplomacy improvements.

How will dwarves handle harvesting things from trees? Grabbing everything from every tree on the map would be absurd, but individually designating every item would be annoying as well. Is there going to be a way to flag trees for continuous harvesting?

I haven't decided yet.  Since trees should last a while when you aren't cutting them down (the duration of the fort, pretty much), something permanent like an activity zone would probably work as well as anything, though I'm not 100% sure that's the best way to do it.  It does give you control over where things happen, and it lasts.

Will a given species of tree grow exactly the same in all conditions?

Will the recent volume of rain have any impact on plant growth?

Are we going to see vines at some point? It would be cool to have a climbable plant that grows onto surfaces, like walls and cliff faces. Such a plant could be used like ladders by the elves...

Altitude might have an impact, but I haven't gotten around to a lot of variation within one species.  I like vines, but we aren't there yet.

So, with fruit-bearing trees, does this mean that we'll get a slew of new ciders to make?

And will there be some underground fruit trees? (If so, then put me down for a barrel of stalacterines.)

Indeed, with each new fruit that goes in, dwarves lead richer lives.  We haven't made final decisions about the underground trees.  Perhaps it wouldn't be appropriate to share them when we do.

What will be the limits on non-fruit tree growths? Are liquids possible? Containers with objects in them? Animate things, Like elves?

Any simple item can be made.  So you can't make things within things or creatures.

Are we going to have more trees that are tied to savage/good/evil/calm regions, and if we are, are they going to "act" in strange ways? Will glumprong tree fruit be poisonous, or something like that? Walking trees?

I'm not doing anything special this time around.  The basic trees are complicated enough to set up for now.

With seasonal flowers, will we have the option of planting flowerbeds?

Do seasonal flowers mean that aboveground plants will no longer be year-round crops?

You don't have any extra control over grass right now, and I haven't really fiddled with farming.  The effects on standard farming would potentially be wide-ranging, but I'm not quite sure how much I want to jump into that right now.

Are you going to be laying any groundwork towards implementing the removal (as stated above) of good/evil flora regions before the next release?

Probably not.

Will we be able to pick flowers for various purposes? For example, certain flowers could be used to produce dyes, while others, like nasturtiums, could be used for food.

Also, will flowers produce fruit, seed pods, or equivalent features?

There isn't a reason to do it yet, anywhere, but an adventurer can.  We might see more action over time.  There will be pickable yummy fruit and so on in this release.

After this release, how many release cycles away are we from seeing taverns and inns? In the last DF Talk I think you mentioned that it had been moving up the priority list.

I think it would be unwise to make guesses about the release after this one, especially since I just took down a multi-release schedule.  It's not possible to say.

Is there a possibility that some fruits will rot on the trees, without falling until after they've rotted, or possibly just rotting away? If fruits rot on the trees, how long will it take for them to rot?

Will unharvested fruits attract vermin such as flies?

Will bees make different types of honey now, now that we have flowers?

It can go either way, though things tend to be more uniform depending on where you set your parameters for a given species of tree.  I don't think there'll be flies for the stuff that falls on the ground, since there'll probably be too much of it.  It would need to be reasonably rare to keep things under control.

I haven't changed anything with bees.

Will all plants (regardless of whether they are multi-tile, single-tile grass, flowers, deciduous, conifers, or whatever) have unified raw parameters/tokens/structure? Like all creatures have? So you could - hypothetically - just change a few parameters in the raws and for example make a single tile grass into a multi-tile flowering plant? Or are there fundamental differences between the raws of different plants?

It's the same material-wise and in various other parameters, though there is still a type variable between trees and grass and shrubs, and trees are the only ones where multi-tile information is used.  The main thing that needs to be reconciled for a full unification is how dwarf mode sees trees as objects for designations, and how extra information needs to be stored for trees that for technical reasons cannot be stored for every tile (so multi-tile grass presents a challenge, memory/processor-wise).

1: What's your stance on taking a creative break?
2: When would you take one? Would it be tied to donations?
3: If money permits, would you travel a bit around the world in order to improve your imagination?
4: When would the next DF meetup be?
5: Besides dwarven mountain homes and kobolds, is there anything left before release?
6: How many duplicates of questions would there have to be for you to intervene?
7: How is the fps rate going so far?

I'm not quite sure what you have in mind.  I've gone off places for vacation for a few days or more in the past.  I think it's more important to keep working, for the most part, since there is a lot to do.  There aren't any meetup plans at this point.

There are plenty of things left for this release.  I haven't done any of the birth/marriage/succession/reclaim stuff yet.  That's pretty big.

Intervene like yelling at people?  It doesn't matter that much.  I just grouped them together.  Some of the groupings are quite large (record setting grouping size!), and if the groupings start to get larger and larger, something would need to be devised, but we're still okay.

FPS is unchanged so far in dwarf mode, and adv mode travel seems fine as well.  The creation of trees and all that doesn't seem to make embark take perceptibly longer, but I'll still have to try out a large forest and see if it gets tangled anywhere and optimize as necessary.  Same goes for wandering through an adv mode forest.

Will tree roots play a role in Fortress mode as a usable material? Will they continue to grow in soil layers during game play?

They will continue to grow.  Not sure they'll be usable for anything.  Maybe the really big ones can pass for wood, but I don't really know.

[Mel_Vixen]

You know you hit a wall of text when its higher then your desk. That being said thank you toady for answering our questions! When you are done with trees for this release can you provide a example raw-file?

[Rose]

This isn't a question, so much as a clarification.

The issue currently with underground trees is that more often than not, the spaces where the trees grow are only one Z level high.

Though with how common larger open areas are, I can see that effecting tree growth patterns more than cave generation.

[smirk]

Excellent way to start the morning; thanks Toady!

This isn't a question, so much as a clarification.

The issue currently with underground trees is that more often than not, the spaces where the trees grow are only one Z level high.

Though with how common larger open areas are, I can see that effecting tree growth patterns more than cave generation.

Beat me to it, Japa! From my question here:

    Will you be making underground trees and mushrooms multi-tile as well, and if so how are you dealing with cavern space requirements for these?

Yeah.  I'm not sure what you mean about cavern space requirements.

I'm gonna make a giant leap and say that, most likely, 1) mushroom-trees won't be as big as their above-ground counterparts, and 2) They'll just grow really misshapen because of cavern space. Also, if he's doing a non-mining system for tree felling (which seems to be the case), all those cavern walls hemming in tower-caps could mean all kinds of lumberjacking headaches...

[Rose]

Personally, I'd love for underground trees to just plain not grow in places without a lot of headroom. that would go a lot towards making underground more interesting.

[Cobbler89]

Unless I switch the direction of the screen when you are lost (something I've considered, and which we did for other reasons in abandoned forts before), you'll know which way to go even without a road, more or less.

I'm trying not to make a suggestion here (and I hope the fact that I'm not sure exactly how it would work helps with that), but given that most pre-modern people could tell compass directions from the sun except on very overcast days, wouldn't it be more realistic to always allow the player a general sense of direction, but in some way lose the ability to use the broader/travel map and/or those sites with compass directions in the corner of the screen to get precisely to your destination, allowing you to head in the right general direction but miss the site to one side or the other if you're not a skilled tracker or something? I know that when travelling on the immediate level (which I do to level my sneaking abilities) I tend to have to keep adjusting my exact path as I get closer and "W" turns into "NW" because "W" was an approximate angle all along and the slight northliness of the destination becomes a bigger deal as I get closer; that's the sort of thing I'd realistically expect to lose without a road or map, and more so trying to find a path through the woods; I have no idea how that translates to the travel map where you can't lose the map, without forcing players to travel on-site if they're lost... Though maybe that's a reasonable enough consequence that could be considered, I have no idea -- turn the travel map into something you can only use via known paths or with sufficiently good navigation skills for the particular terrain you're in... But there might be better alternatives that don't make players feel like much of travelling is forced into the slow, on-ground movement for sake of alleged realism (whereas right now on-ground travelling is something some of us do if we want to level sneaking, and is otherwise unnecessary; I suppose that may change already with sneaking mechanics updates). Just thinking out loud, hope it's interesting/helpful.

[davros]

Is there any chance of you posting screenshots of goblin towers, elf cities, and so on?

[therahedwig]

Come to think of it, won't it make sense to have grasses designable at some point too? Even if it's only for the Humans. Because grass is needed to make hay and straw, which, amongst other things is used to feed animals during winter and travel.
I mean, right now, the Dwarves could technically just park their livestock in the caves where they'll eat cavemoss and floor fungi, but Humans might be looking for an alternative that requires less digging. Not to mention what Dwarves will do whenever they're stuck above a multi-level aquifer, the first winter is coming, and they still haven't gotten far enough to pierce the damn thing yet.
And while, right now, it doesn't really matter that there's snow on top of the grass, perhaps in the future it may be considered to make creatures actually receptive to temperature and give a reason to why winter could ruin an ill-prepared fort. (Aside from the 'haha, you didn't build a well, and you don't have enough booze' joke that strikes many a first-time player)

[Sunday]

Sounds like adventure mode is going to get really fun.

I will say that I'd love to see massive trees (either redwoods or elf-trees, or both, though it would be awesome to be able to embark on them and I doubt you could do that with elf-trees), that have like 15 square-unit trunks, and go 40-50 z levels into the air, with forks in the trunk and such. It would be amazing to build a forts up in the canopy of a forest like that--maybe even having minecarts be the only way to get to one tree to another. But I also understand that that might just completely destroy FPS, what with all the sky above it.

[CrzyMonkeyNinja]

Will we be seeing the new trees producing smaller branches and twigs for things like arrow making, instead of just logs for furniture? 

[MrWiggles]

Will we be seeing the new trees producing smaller branches and twigs for things like arrow making, instead of just logs for furniture? 

You tend to use logs to make arrow shafts.

[adasdad]

will we get the ability in adventure mode to "mix" items without defining a specific reaction, for instance dipping weapons into vials of something, or poisoning food?

[DNK]

So, if you're going to include more microhabitats (like undercanopy grasses and fields, etc), will that include distinctions between things like:

- riparian zones (river banks) and the surrounding areas
- "old growth" forests and "new growth" areas within them where a tree "recently" fell or something that caused a disturbance [obviously could just be applied randomly rather than fully modeled, though adjusted for values like soil depth (less = more treefalls), wind (planned: higher = more falls), fire likelihood (would cause much larger "new growth" areas), etc, at least during initial embark level generation]. This would require plants to have a variable describing them on a spectrum between "rapid spreader" and "slow, long-term dominant species". Those with values closer to the former would be far more likely to appear after a recent fall (or clearing by dwarves in realtime) and grow fast at first, but as they grow larger, their rate of growth would slow, and the slow-growing long-term species would eventually overtake them (usually, but not always, of course).
- flora based on underlying soil/rock (for example, something occuring over a bauxite deposit would have high acidity and corresponding changes in plant makeup). This would require building values into each plant for acidity/base tolerance and adjusting likelihood of existence by that.
- other biological distinctions within general habitats/biomes I can't think of right now