Thanks to Putnam, Footkerchief, smjjames, Nasikabatrachus, Matoro, MrWiggles, monk12, Valtam, Knight Otu, Manveru Taurënér, Tawarochir, EnigmaticHat and all of the people I missed for helping out with questions. If you don't see a response to your question, it was quite likely addressed right after you asked it, so please go and check!
Will climbing affect dodging or blocking or any other means of avoiding attacks?
Yeah, dodging is affected pretty drastically. Climbing requires a free grasp, so in that sense blocking is also restricted.
What happens when an adventurer aquires a training weapon by some means and uses it in this way(?)
Adventurers don't pull attacks with training weapons, and wooden swords and so on are still capable of lethal damage. If I remember, when dwarves are pulling their shots in sparring, it helps prevent accidents to not have an edge, which is what the training weapons do, but they are still dangerous when used at full force.
To what extent do you know, when you code something, that it is only a placeholder for the 'real' code to come later on down the line? What percentage of the game do you think will have to be rewritten, so far?
If your civ starts with no access to, say, native copper, but you build a fort that does, will the civ then have access after retirement? Would it be necessary to actually mine it, or to sell it? Would surface plants become available in trade or for embark for that civ?
It happens quite often, though a lot of the release delays come from trying to not have it happen all the time. I have no idea about percentages. Footkerchief posted a healthy list of placeholder features. I'm also not sure how to categorize 'real' -- 1.0? There are always ideas to improve things, but it's good to push them down the line sometimes. DF is an amorphous blobby critter.
I haven't gotten into the economy. Right now it doesn't try to update entity information, but once sites start producing resources after world gen, it'll be crucial to handle that sort of thing.
With all this talk of Jumping over single wide pits and channels, will we get invaders able to jump discovered\known trap tiles now?
People that know about traps get to walk through them, if I remember. They haven't otherwise been told they exist or that they have something to deal with.
What with climbing and jumping being a thing, have you considered toning down the ramps on mountainous terrain? As it stands, it sure is easy for dwarfmode units to just stroll up the side of a cliff.
I've always wanted to play a cliffside fortress where the perilous terrain actually performed its role as a natural barrier. Invaders showing up on the site at the top of a cliff (despite that path being blocked as far as the world map is concerned) is quite the nuisance.
Edit: And on that note, do travelling armies respect the path of entry when arriving on a player's site?
Manveru Taurënér addresses the ramp part, mentioning that I posted earlier that cliff faces will return and that we are in a better spot for that now with climbing in the game, but that it isn't done yet and won't be for this time. Armies have some rudimentary path finding that respects certain obstacles (not rivers at all yet, since they have to be able to cross them), so mountains should be respected.
Will reactions to simultaneous attacks happen separately or simultaneously? Sorry if this has been asked before, but I'm only a Dabbling Record Keeper.
Nothing is truly simultaneous in the game, in terms of the instant of final resolution. That's a very difficult problem. Many actions can be going on at the same time, but they still resolve separately, though things like active defenses can also be spread out over time and happen "simultaneously" in that sense. So I suppose it depends on what you mean.
Can Dwarves dig while climbing?
I don't think they'd know to do it, since the path component number of those areas is not set, and they don't do the expensive climb-pathing for jobs.
Will having deep dwarf sites in your civ mean you can import and embark with goods harvested from lower cavern layers?
Deep dwarf sites don't go as deep as fortress sites, oddly enough, so the issue is more about fortress sites, and I don't recollect changing how that works.
In a previous update you mentioned that starting an adventurer gives you a little blurb about the local state of affairs now. Were you warned of the approaching goblins when starting the adventurer?
If the above is true, will it accidentally reveal ambushes near where you start at first?
It warned me about the invasion, but it isn't nuanced enough to warn me about impending death. It would have been a useful tidbit of information.
Also, if a Dwarf and a Goblin bump into each other in mid-climb, will they engage in melee? If so, do they fall or are they still hanging onto the wall?
They can fight while they are climbing, and it doesn't make them fall automatically.
Is [getting involved in existing conflicts] applicable to Fortress Mode? Will we see civilians behaving in intelligent ways when confronted with hostiles (such as engaging the enemy if they happened to be armed and they judge the target weak, or actually finding a safe place in the fortress to run to instead of running away stupidly into the wild)
Intelligent is a strong word to use around DF. They use the same stuff as adventure mode, in any case, though the key situations where you'd get an interesting effect are less frequent. I'm not quite sure what'll happen at this point since I haven't been back there while working on this insurrection stuff.
So, then, are children still liable to jump into fights between much older adults at times? Does age factor into their decision making at all?
Toady, are human kids armed with standard-issue/boning knives like their peasant parents? Or are they able to grab avaliable weaponry if there's a hurry to defend themselves and their loved ones? Do Dwarven kids display this kind of behavior in Fort Mode, at least with biting and scratching when their personality allows them to fight?
Children are still treated as adults for personality and equipment. All that should change as they age, but it doesn't work that way at this point. People aren't yet proactive about defending themselves with various ground objects. That always seems like a feature I shouldn't announce when it happens though, since it would be funny.
If you charge at someone, full speed, weapon drawn, will they perceive an attack before you are right next to them? What about NPC attacks, are they recognized before the enemy is in melee range?
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I want to know if there's a disparity with PC and NPC melee charges. Especially now that we're in the last stretch of changes. Also, Toady talked about how going around with your weapon drawn should eventually matter, and this seems like a case where it really should.
I still have to do inventory perception, but there'll be some reaction if they can see you. That said, there is still a bit of a mind-meld that NPCs can do with each other once they intend to fight, assuming the target knows the person is there. The sides of the conflict are separated memory-wise, but if they see somebody with hostile intentions, they can react, since a conflict exists. I'm not sure if that'll change all that much, since a lot of the reactions are very reasonable, and I prefer it to mindlessness. It's more about guessing if the player is acting like an invading army or other ill-intentioned actor, without the benefit of the game knowing if it is true or not, and there's associated trickiness with that. Ideally that could all be homogenized with NPC-to-NPC reactions, but that will make NPCs much stupider unless the intention-detection system works very well. There's always something glaring left over. I do hope to make reactions to player actions "pretty good" over time, in any case, whether it takes over as the only system or not. On the plus side, I don't think we'll have separated conflict-detection systems just for players, even for this time. The NPC-to-NPC conflict detection augments their reactions, but any reaction that applies to you also applies to NPC-to-NPC reactions, so the only things special about you should be statuses anybody can have, like being a "stranger" (they shouldn't freak out if a known armed local guard walks by them, for instance, even though coming-at-me-with-weapon would be rated high as the guard moves into an adjacent tile). Stealth is a little exotic for the player, since you don't have a vision cone, but that's a different kind of issue.
In the next update, and in the general future, will it ever be possible to be robbed whilst on the road? Maybe just killed, then robbed, but being left alive would make it much more interesting.
Knight Otu mentioned that we're missing a lot of relevant stuff that comes from the thief role (and also the hero role where some thiefy bits are sitting under the assumption that they would happen first). That said, the original bandit harassment that started this release off long ago was going to include robbery and also leaving people alive, so you might actually get what you want. They stop you on the road now, yell at you and leave you alive, but they still need to ask for things and respond to rejection properly.
You've said you dread the fourth dimension(s). What addition are you really looking forward to?
Most of the things are in the notes because we think they'd be fun to have in the game, and sort of constitute our "favorites" list by themselves, as opposed to the things we don't want to do. I have trouble coming up with just one or a few favorites when it comes to pretty much anything, though surely some features rate differently than others.
When [world gen] trade is being worked on, will it be affected by a civ's domesticated animals, such as fliers or beasts of burden?
Nothing has changed there, and I'm not sure what would change in the near-term since it is so abstracted. Eventually what they have available could matter in terms of production rates and that sort of thing, or whether they have airborne trade routes and colonization or something.
Are we going to be able to see the personalities and preferences of our adventurers like we can see the personalities of our dwarves?
You don't really have those yet, and I'm not sure what's going to happen there, since it's a complicated problem and various decisions have to be made, and it also isn't that urgent or important at this point (since you can do what you want without restriction and it doesn't check your preferences for anything even if you have them). I think it gives you some facets after retirement that relate to you having been an adventurer, but I haven't invested any time in that.
How do legs influence climbing? Can you still climb if you can't control your legs anymore (motor nerve damage, amputation)?
Also, IIRC with the combat/speed rewrite, you can't just grasp an infinite amount of things in both your hands anymore, does that mean that someone currently climbing and say, getting shot at with arrows cannot use his shield, because it's not on his hand?
It doesn't let you climb from the grounded position, regardless of health. That's a little odd since you can't slither over a wall and go down, even if it makes more sense as a restriction going up. Critters with three or more legs that can still stand after suffering a loss are assessed the normal penalities they'd suffer as with their other speeds. That isn't really ideal either, especially for flying. Not sure when either'll change at this point.
Yeah, you need a free grasp to climb, but you are allowed to carry things in one hand (or n-1).
So are people's emotional reactions to the deaths of others influenced by opinion, or just relationship status? For example what if someone hears that their parent got killed, but they hated said parent?
The opinion matters as well, though there isn't generally a rich history between relatives that would cause that kind of falling out.
People now react at the sight of friends' body parts. What if I enter a room, covered of the blood of a relative ? Or if I have a body part wielded/in inventory but I don't drop/throw it ?
Will people freak out if you sell them the body parts of their dead relatives?
They don't address coverings yet, though that'll be one of the things that comes up eventually since it is a recurring theme, and there's an off-chance this time. They also don't check inventories for body parts, though that one will likely make it in this time. With the checks for wielded weapons, it should be pretty natural. They don't run every routine on items being sold to them -- there's a difficulty in that barter is still frozen in time (unlike conversations in general, which have been pulled out into game time), so the body reactions are more difficult to homogenize with existing reactions (like animal kills and so on). I'm not sure how that'll turn out. Right now they don't care.
If someone smashes you into someone, killing that person, do you get the blame?
I'm pretty sure your character as a projectile would not be blamed. What I don't remember is if it considers the attacker as an "archer", and what level of lethality that attack is considered if it is considered as having been "launched". (check) Nope. It is a blameless projectile.
Does the emotional impact of seeing dead bodies scale with the amount of dead bodies seen? Is it a linear progression?
There's the whole "getting used to conflict" thing, which is in flux. There should end up being something. It might squash the horror effect more immediately than the effects from seeing dead loved ones.
If one were to be at war with the elves, killed a siege and left the bodies to rot and then had a later siege contain family members of the fallen... Would they react upon seeing the bodies? If not, what more is required to have this happen?
Toady One, can we have confirmation that siegers, aside from generals, will now come from the worldgen population rather than generated in the new version? There seems to be some confusion about whether or not that actually happens in the next version.
Will kobold thieves now come from worldgen rather than being randomly generated as I think they are?
Yeah, assuming you can get a relation to come, it'll happen. You get historical figures quite often with armies now since it tries to snatch up those people preferentially. You'll get a horror reaction out of them from other bodies. Body dumps at tactically sound times and so on can all come into play.
Hoping to not have any generated units, yeah, though we still have to consider thieves and necromancers since they aren't currently running around attacking towns and so on. I'm not sure what'll happen there yet.
People will react to finding a murdered friend or family member, but will they be put off by just finding a corpse even if they have no idea who it was?
Yeah, we've got horror and fear for the general corpse encounter. Fewer emotions pile up, but they can still freak out, especially if they are sensitive to that sort of thing.
Spat/Secreted/Whatever fluids will still freeze in some conditions right?
On a related note: If tears/sweat freeze, will they have a chance damage a unit in extreme cold?
I don't remember if any environmental temperature code is called on projectiles. I think it is called on coverings, and then it would have the same effect as everything else, temperature-wise. It has been long enough that I don't exactly remember what that means in terms of damaging people.
If we're able to spit and sweat, does that mean that adventurers no longer need to make sure they have a supply of water, because they can just jump and and down a bunch, get sweaty, and drink their own sweat? Or spit on themselves and then drink it? Or have you taken this into consideration and caused sweat/spit to proportionally increase the adventurer's thirst?
I haven't addressed the spatter-drinking issues in general. The recent additions certainly put more pressure on that sort of change.
Will tears of joy exist as well?
Technically, Toady mentioned the secretion trigger as "extreme emotion", so I wouldn't necessarily discount it (and he wants to get to some kind of cheerier territory). On the other hand, people seem to interpret the negative social response usage hit rather too broadly as emotional usage hints in general.
Indeed, the important question is whether or not joy exists, and how much. If it does exist in sufficient quantities, it will make people cry, since the extreme emotion trigger applies to anything that passes a threshold. Joy being one of them depends on certain conversions for dwarf mode thoughts which are probably going to be quite diverse, but I'm not 100% sure what the final emotion list will be. Does happiness rated at 100% bring tears of joy or just tears of great happiness? I'm trying to choose the emotion words as precisely as I can, respecting the situation causing the emotion, but I think there'll be screw-ups, sloppiness and differing views there continuing forward, especially because certain words don't work as well when you consider both the causal situation and the strength of emotion. I'm trying to restrict to situation as the primary determiner.
Yeah, there was an over-interpretation here of the negative social response hint -- it has to do with a creature's reaction to another creature, rather than the emotion levels in its head, and I just threw in a simple trigger for reaction since it is what I needed. Depending on how the above stuff turns out, I might end up making broader interpretations true or not. We'll see.
Will my companions in adventure mode ever be able to use crutches?
People brought up all the various sides of this -- you can give people crutches now, and if they have them in their hand it is fine, but they need to put them there and not in storage. Equipping crutches is not something they currently think about. This may or may not occur by the time we are done with the release.
Will the faction AIs do anything on their own, especially based on player actions? For instance, if the player destroys much of an invading force will the AI then decide that it is safe to stage a rebellion to force them out entirely?
We should have (partial) AI insurrections, yeah. I'm pretty much sitting on top of that with the day's work, though the end of the month is always strange and shot-through with non-programming obligations. Should have something soon, anyway. Since the civilian perception of the weakness of their rulers is based on defiance against the entity forces, player action or at least presence is at the start of it all (since nobody else among the civilians acts on their own when they aren't in your loaded area, in the absence of an ongoing insurrection). Once the perceived strength numbers are low enough, things will ignite and play out without the necessity of your future contributions, though lack of said contributions might doom them to failure at times, especially if their perception of strength does not line up with reality (it will come to realign as they fail).
Are there any positive interactions an adventurer can perform with a companion this release?
Nah, there's nothing interesting yet. DF has always been unintentionally disrespectful of the power of friendship and family, using them instead as vectors for tantrum spirals and misery, and sometime in the future hopefully things will make more sense and DF will become more life-affirming.
How much of a low-hanging fruit would you consider multiple-person conversations to be? Will we be able to address large crowds in adv mode anytime soon, or is that slated to be covered by different mechanics entirely?
Footkerchief had our quote, concerning what we were going for when we started, and the conversation infrastructure now supports many participants. I haven't added a market-style yell out information option to the player's talking interface yet, but that would be all that is needed. So far I've just been testing stuff by telling one person and letting them tell the others. We'll probably have multi-person addresses for the release to facilitate mass order giving and recruitment, as much as anything.
If it's something you already have made for your own purposes is there any possibility that you could share a schema of sorts for the .dat save files?
I don't have something like that prepared, and doing it from scratch and maintaining it would gobble up too much time.