Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[lethosor]

I seen you already tried to "prove" that major releases do not take that long. Reality says otherwise. In fact, I would be not surprised if next major release would beat current record. For certain it will not be short.

It's true that major releases take a long time (this release has already set a new record, taking longer than 0.31) - Putnam was saying that the bugfixing period before a major release (which we're currently in) has never taken over a month.

[LordBaal]

I'm still saying early to mid June just because. My guts tell me that this version has bugs that will require that much and also the optimization part that is no small when you consider the dynamic and live world we are getting. Of course I hope it gets done earlier but whatever time it takes it's fine.

[Mesa]

At this point Toady could literally release it at any time.
Whether that would be a good idea is up to him, of course.

[Lolfail0009]

At this point Toady could literally release it at any time.
Whether that would be a good idea is up to him, of course.

That's a comforting thought.

[Dirst]

I'm still saying early to mid June just because. My guts tell me that this version has bugs that will require that much and also the optimization part that is no small when you consider the dynamic and live world we are getting. Of course I hope it gets done earlier but whatever time it takes it's fine.

The worldgen machinery churns through game-centuries in a few minutes.  I don't think a daily or weekly "tick" in the world is going to slow down the game noticeably (unless you are on a very marginal computer that constantly swaps everything in and out of virtual memory).

[Parisbre56]

I'm still saying early to mid June just because. My guts tell me that this version has bugs that will require that much and also the optimization part that is no small when you consider the dynamic and live world we are getting. Of course I hope it gets done earlier but whatever time it takes it's fine.

The worldgen machinery churns through game-centuries in a few minutes.  I don't think a daily or weekly "tick" in the world is going to slow down the game noticeably (unless you are on a very marginal computer that constantly swaps everything in and out of virtual memory).

Yes, but you have to consider that there are various levels of abstraction and different things get computed depending on where you are. Worldgen is the uppermost level of abstraction. As you get closer to your adventurer, more things are calculated, for example whether or not there is someone talking with the leader of the site or where the various patrols in it are. Of course, not all things that happen in worldgen happen in adventure/fort mode, but this is offset by the fact that they have to be computed in greater detail because you are there (EDIT: or rather, you have the potential to be there), witnessing those events unfold.

[Dirst]

I'm still saying early to mid June just because. My guts tell me that this version has bugs that will require that much and also the optimization part that is no small when you consider the dynamic and live world we are getting. Of course I hope it gets done earlier but whatever time it takes it's fine.

The worldgen machinery churns through game-centuries in a few minutes.  I don't think a daily or weekly "tick" in the world is going to slow down the game noticeably (unless you are on a very marginal computer that constantly swaps everything in and out of virtual memory).

Yes, but you have to consider that there are various levels of abstraction and different things get computed depending on where you are. Worldgen is the uppermost level of abstraction. As you get closer to your adventurer, more things are calculated, for example whether or not there is someone talking with the leader of the site or where the various patrols in it are. Of course, not all things that happen in worldgen happen in adventure/fort mode, but this is offset by the fact that they have to be computed in greater detail because you are there (EDIT: or rather, you have the potential to be there), witnessing those events unfold.

I understand that there are rings of abstraction around an adventurer or fortress.  What I meant was that changing purely static areas into worldgen-level-abstract areas shouldn't tax the computer too much.  Although having a thing cross an abstraction layer boundary is obviously nontrivial, this already happens in adventure mode.  My guess is that making abstraction layer changes happen in fortress mode is the challenge.

Edit: Meant "shouldn't" not "should".  I hate those typos that change the meaning of the sentence.

[Putnam]

Worldgen abstraction takes 20 seconds for an entire year when the world is very active and the world is large. 20 seconds over an FPS-limited hour and 7 minutes is barely noticeable at all.

[Putnam]

a side effect of this was that the "material reaction product" stuff you might be familiar with from modding now also has a similar tag to send over an item type with the material, so a single reaction can produce different item types depending on the incoming reagent's material. I'm not sure how useful that is overall, but it could cut down on some clutter.

Is the syntax for that final enough to release it (the syntax, that is)? And if so... can you?

[Guylock]

I look forward to this.
I always like games like this that are alive.

[Mesa]

Now that you're (technically) finished with the release (as of this post, at any rate), what's the new version number going to be? 0.38? 0.40?

[LordBaal]

It's time to..


Do you have any plans on making a world editor sometime? Or do you use one already? I mean not only shape the world but also add characters, religions, monsters, lairs, factions, kings, towers, castles, forests... etc? Something that allows you to lay down a world the exact way you want to, down to names, ages, genders and everything, and for example, make a start scenario from any part of a Lord of The Rings book/movie?

[Dirst]

Do you have any plans on making a world editor sometime? Or do you use one already? I mean not only shape the world but also add characters, religions, monsters, lairs, factions, kings, towers, castles, forests... etc? Something that allows you to lay down a world the exact way you want to, down to names, ages, genders and everything, and for example, make a start scenario from any part of a Lord of The Rings book/movie?

These feature is already in the game.  All you need to do is re-gen your world enough times, and you'll get exactly what you were looking for.  The state-space for DF is on the large side, so it might take a while. 

[LordBaal]

hahaha

I ask because it could be interesting to recreate for example, an start scenario from Warhammer Fantasy Battles and play as either an adventurer or a dwarf fort.

[Knight Otu]

Do you have any plans on making a world editor sometime? Or do you use one already? I mean not only shape the world but also add characters, religions, monsters, lairs, factions, kings, towers, castles, forests... etc? Something that allows you to lay down a world the exact way you want to, down to names, ages, genders and everything, and for example, make a start scenario from any part of a Lord of The Rings book/movie?

That's Future Future material:

EDITORS: Draw your own region maps, create your own towns, creatures, items, start situations, etc. For example, you could create Earth at various time periods (or an amalgamation of various time periods).

Toady:   Yeah, yeah. Then you'd be able to ... you could recruit half of them or whatever, and then you'd have this really interesting party of people that you understood and that the game understood how you understood, to some extent; it'd be awesome. That kind of thing would mix nicely with a world editor or whatever, just being able to create the kind of characters that you want, for people that want to reenact their favorite book or whatever, when we get to that. Because I mean it's the kind of thing that's just kind of sitting there waiting to be done, right? A site map editor or a world map editor that's better than the one we've got, and the reason I haven't done that or I haven't moved towards that at all is because I'm not sure what the character editor would be like or things like that, putting together the world that way; and because the world's changing so much it would just kind of be another anchor on the game making it slower to develop because you'd have to go back and look at the editor. But we're going to reach a certain point, when we start thinking about things like this, where it becomes very natural to add an editor that would already be tied into the intent of retirement, so it wouldn't actually be an anchor on the game because I'd have to change it anyway. If the editors ... Right now there's a name editor for naming your fortress and so that name editor always has to be kept up to date anyway, so that name editor can be used in the editing, in the actual world editing, so there's no loss there in terms of having a world editor. But the characters are different, like having a historical figure editor right now is a pretty heavy cost, but it wouldn't necessarily be, anyway.