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[Baffler]

Edit: Ninja'd.

[Footkerchief]

12/23/2013 Toady One I should be getting back to the remaining core issues with site-to-site fighting tonight. The main complication is that something important can be happening nearby as you shift back and forth between different levels of abstraction. If you are walking away from a place where somebody is demanding tribute from a site leader mid-conversation, it has to make sure the more abstract system occurring at the "realized site" level picks up at the proper point and moves forward at the proper speed, more or less, and that negotiations occurring at the "non-realized site" level jump to the correct building if the site's building map becomes realized, and that they further jump to the correct room if you get the actual tiles generated. I'm not going to try to have the game jump into the middle of conversations at this point if you zoom in, but you might arrive at a location just as a conversation is starting. There's also the matter of multiple groups trying to attack or make demands of a site at the same time.

Whoa, NPCs initiating conversations with each other as part of world events!  That seems like a big step -- it'll be important for making the world feel dynamic and alive.

[monk12]

Will there be any indication NPCs are having a conversation?
Will eavesdropping be possible?
What happens if the conversation is interrupted by player antics? I'm thinking especially of important conversations; can you create Groundhog Day style loops by constantly interrupting conversations through violence or other shenanigans, etc

[Footkerchief]

Will there be any indication NPCs are having a conversation?
Will eavesdropping be possible?

The new conversation system works in regular play, not through a menu, so I'm pretty sure everyone can hear everyone else.  Not sure how distance/volume factors in, though.

02/15/2013 Toady One In our ongoing 'moments of restraint' boss rush, I'm currently up against the conversation engine. I've decided I pretty much have to get conversations out into regular play so that I can tell a room full of people that I just killed a goblin patrol, but I'm trying to avoid a completely monstrous overhaul. Bartering will remain an instanteous activity for instance -- pulling that out right now is unnecessary and would take a bit of time. It is a continuing process, but the result should be cool, and it'll allow you to spread news in a more satisfying fashion (rather than telling one person and having it magically spread around instantly, though they will still spread news after a time once they are offloaded). I should have an honest insurrection in place before long here.

 02/20/2013 Toady One The new conversation approach is working out well enough. Each statement takes about as much time as a regular step, so if you find enough to talk about in some later release, you'd be able to chat until the sun goes down. This also means that conversations are susceptible to interruption, and each statement made by people you are talking to is a "move" they are making either simultaneously with their other actions (like walking and fighting) or instead of them. Incidents you are a part of or rumors that you hear now go into your head, and you can pass them along or bring them up with whoever you talk to. Right now these incidents include every time you strangle a wolf out in the woods, so I'll probably have to find a way to manage the lists according to how interesting they are. In any case, since you can now bring up the occupation and related events, it's a matter of adding some reactions and conversation options geared toward getting the ball rolling.

 12/05/2013 Toady One I mixed opponent's bragging about prior violent acts into the new conversation setup (which means they won't drone on and on in a separate screen). This also has the effect of allowing you to brag to people, though there isn't an effect from that at this point. In addition, you can demand that an opponent yield or request a cease to fighting without anybody surrendering. It helps to get you out of accidental or non-accidental fist fights, for instance, and it'll likely come up as we get to the last village-to-village pass and other antics. I also cleaned up the trading stuff a bit more and fixed an odd bug where telling one companion to wait while having another companion follow you caused them to hack at each other until only one was left, due to the waiting companion thinking of itself as an army camp guard and getting all antsy about the suspicious activity along his very short patrol route.

[Sizik]

Say you create two worlds from the same seed: one with world gen running for 100 years, and the other for 10 years in which you then play an isolationist fort (self-sustaining, no trade or migrants) for 90 years. Would there be any major differences between the two worlds?

[Putnam]

Say you create two worlds from the same seed: one with world gen running for 100 years, and the other for 10 years in which you then play an isolationist fort (self-sustaining, no trade or migrants) for 90 years. Would there be any major differences between the two worlds?

Oh, I'm sure. As has been said before, not everything's been moved to in-play yet.

[King Mir]

Furthermore, even offloaded areas in fortress mode have the luxury of more resources for more detailed events than world gen allows. That means more things for the RNG to be used for, which means completely different results.

[Zavvnao]

this feels nice, hearing conversations will happen in the next means a step closer to language implementation in the far future.

[Scoops Novel]

Say you create two worlds from the same seed: one with world gen running for 100 years, and the other for 10 years in which you then play an isolationist fort (self-sustaining, no trade or migrants) for 90 years. Would there be any major differences between the two worlds?

Thanks, you beat me to the punch.

Will reputation of heroes and villains go for certain "styles" of legend, depending on the nature of the heroics/villainy and the background of the character? I imagine that a local peasant who kills a rampaging dragon might be considered an everyman who rose to the odds, as opposed to a barely glimpsed mysterious stranger who coincides with a suspicious lack of megabeasts wherever he goes.

[Footkerchief]

Will reputation of heroes and villains go for certain "styles" of legend, depending on the nature of the heroics/villainy and the background of the character? I imagine that a local peasant who kills a rampaging dragon might be considered an everyman who rose to the odds, as opposed to a barely glimpsed mysterious stranger who coincides with a suspicious lack of megabeasts wherever he goes.

Yes:

Is "reputation" planned to encompass other features apart from "good/bad"?

Yeah, even in the current release, your hero status is a separate variable from anything to do with being an enemy, and in the next release, there'll be a few more variables with more-or-less independent numbers.  So your adventurer can simultaneously have a reputation as a hero for rescuing several abducted children and a reputation for being a violent jackass that beats people up all the time.  It's not exactly complex character building, but we have started on the long road away from +/-.  The reactions of people are simple as it stands, but different people filter known reputations differently based on their position and personality...  the emphasis is on "simple" for now though, he he he.

do evil NPCs like to associate with evil players, and vice versa? Does this reputation system create preferences?

We don't really have recognized evil interactions yet (you can't go off and be a goblin snatcher in this release, for example), though we're hoping to get some meat in along the village/bandit leader + ruffian/hero/fighting reputations spectrums before the release, and not all town/bandit leaders will have the same methods.

How is reputation going to be handled for the different adventurer roles? If I'm a famous trader and offer my services to a noble, I wouldn't want to receive a kill monster quest as if I were known for being a hero type. What if I have conflicting reputations, like being a famous monster slayer and a wanted thief?

I'm not sure how the reputation will be handled.  I've removed the "hero" hf-entity link and merged it with the vampire etc. information from world gen, so there's this overall entity reputation that has lots of different variables.  It hasn't gotten to the point where that matters yet though, and I'm not sure how it'll play out.  At least it's already in a place where you certainly won't be getting "heroic" fame as a trader, once you can get fame as a trader, so it should be neat once more roles go in.

Those quotes don't explicitly mention your backround or how much you keep to yourself, but it's certainly fair game.  Mysterious, sinister strangers come up in many of ThreeToe's stories such as A Terror to Behold.

[Aseaheru]

You know what I'm looking forward to?
The background map on the main Bay12 page, when it shows all those little provinces everywhere.

Ooh, that sounds like fun...

[smjjames]

Say you create two worlds from the same seed: one with world gen running for 100 years, and the other for 10 years in which you then play an isolationist fort (self-sustaining, no trade or migrants) for 90 years. Would there be any major differences between the two worlds?

Oh, I'm sure. As has been said before, not everything's been moved to in-play yet.

Sounds like something that someone could do !SCIENCE! on. However, 90 years is a REALLY long time, even if your computer is a beefy one. Maybe something like 20 or 30 years would tax your patience less, though differences might be harder to notice.

Question/thought partially related to the underwater trees bug (which might not even exist in the next version), how do multi-tile trees and cavern fungi deal with tight spaces like one tile wide corridors that would otherwise be too small for a tower cap with a 2x2 trunk to grow in? Do they just sort of force themselves into the space or simply not grow at all?

[Footkerchief]

Question/thought partially related to the underwater trees bug (which might not even exist in the next version), how do multi-tile trees and cavern fungi deal with tight spaces like one tile wide corridors that would otherwise be too small for a tower cap with a 2x2 trunk to grow in? Do they just sort of force themselves into the space or simply not grow at all?

What about underground trees ? Will they behave like surface trees ? Will they grow be limited to the size of the cavern, will the roots of the 3rd level of cavern in contact with the magma see ?

I wouldn't expect super-roots, but they will grow through the space they fit in.  For some of the tunnelly areas we might not have anything.  I've saved finalizing things like tower-caps for deep sites, and we are almost there.

[...] There are now properly gigantic underground mushrooms. In the open caverns the tower caps can become quite voluminous, but they can also squeeze into tunnels at times. [...]

[smjjames]

Question/thought partially related to the underwater trees bug (which might not even exist in the next version), how do multi-tile trees and cavern fungi deal with tight spaces like one tile wide corridors that would otherwise be too small for a tower cap with a 2x2 trunk to grow in? Do they just sort of force themselves into the space or simply not grow at all?

What about underground trees ? Will they behave like surface trees ? Will they grow be limited to the size of the cavern, will the roots of the 3rd level of cavern in contact with the magma see ?

I wouldn't expect super-roots, but they will grow through the space they fit in.  For some of the tunnelly areas we might not have anything.  I've saved finalizing things like tower-caps for deep sites, and we are almost there.

[...] There are now properly gigantic underground mushrooms. In the open caverns the tower caps can become quite voluminous, but they can also squeeze into tunnels at times. [...]

He didn't say how big the tunnels were while I have a pretty specific example

[Aseaheru]

If it dont fit it dont grow, sounds like.

Tunnels are normally one wide, yes?