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[Cobbler89]

We've been fudging books for a while now, and I'm not sure if that's going to change yet.  Depending on how you think of the printing press, it's either before or after the 1400 cutoff it seems, so we could toy around with that later.  Right now, everything is hand-copied in world generation in the libraries.

Right now all the covers are still made out of stone sometimes, and the pages don't have materials (or whatever it does for that item improvement).  I'm still debating taking a further detour into better materials for books (and then doing scrolls or whatever instead of books oftentimes).  It might be best to wait.  Books might still be destroyed in world gen when bad things happen, and in regular play when really bad things happen.

Might the oldest and/or earthiest cultures in the game use clay tablets? Wax tablets? Stone tablets?

(Not sure whether to color that or consider it too suggestiony...)

Two tavern and mug related questions:

First, have you considered adding 'breaking mugs' as a celebratory tavern activity?  The breaking of the mugs would generate happiness in the craftsdwarf who made the mug, and the breaker of the mug, with the happiness generated being dependent on the craftdwarfship of the mugs?  Dwarves would always collect the best mugs they could from the stockpiles.

Second, have you considered allowing artifact mugs and musical instruments to be added to taverns as part of the décor, increasing the happiness of dwarves that see them in much the same way as levers can be admired?  Perhaps do the same with figurines, jewelry, and scepters in temples?

I haven't considered it at all -- right now a broken masterpiece mug would make the craftsdwarf upset, unless this is an idiom I'm not familiar with.

"This drink is good, I want another."

Would it be possible for dancing to be weaponised/afflicted? I'm thinking along the lines of dancing mania: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_mania. I have a compelling mental image of the potential for a forgotten beast to coat a Fortress in dust that renders dwarves unable to do anything but dance until dead, or a Pied Piper character who just shows up at the fort and leads Dwarves off the map with their mesmerising music...
 
Secondly: How do hostiles deal with music? If a Goblin army lays siege to your fort, and your tavern area happens to be throwing an amazing gig, are attackers in ear-shot likely to drop what they're doing and just start rocking out because the bard's got sick flute skills?

It's not possible to do that yet, though I guess it is a step closer now that we have dancing, so that's something.

I think it might actually be possible that the attackers will hear the music and some of them might even be moved to tears by it...  but they can still accommodate their other emotions and motivations, so it wouldn't change the outcome -- combat priorities are pretty high.

So, if this is anything like how "creatures can react to signs of death now" translated to "a stray tooth will paralyze an entire army with fear", it's entirely possible that the goblin siegers will leave a river of tears as they approach any fortress with taverns audible from outside, and players will trap their most annoying dwarves in "taverns" scattered across the surface to make ambushers evident by their tear-rivers?

It isn't randomly generating math theorems or anything, though I can see something vaguely happening along those lines for certain magic forms (as with the Threetoe story involving magic).

Cross product of two 3D vectors, anyone?

Does that mean there will be maps in Libraries, allowing to discover new locations?

Not yet, but we're working toward that.  It has been on the dev pages in several forms forever, and now we have one more reason and avenue to get there.

Will we get these scholars in the fortress? (like the old philosopher)
Do you have any plans to have them create books while in player fortresses? Will we be able to create libraries ourselves (like a hospital or temple zone or whatever) and attract scholars?

Quote from: devlog
    The outlines are ready for [...] geographers [...]

Does this include cartography? And by extension, will that mean the world map you see in adventure mode will be influenced by your civs cartographic/geographic knowledge? Will we be able to find physical maps?
In general, will the book framework be used for anything else than actual books? I'm thinking of pamphlets, proclamations, wanted posters, and as mentioned, maps.

If we get the libraries into fort mode, which will probably happen to a small extent, we'll have fort mode scholars and books in a very basic capacity.  And yeah, the idea was that they'd be analogous to taverns and temples as meta-multi-zone location thingies that can attract outsiders.

The geography innovations include several related to cartography, but as with everything else we aren't tying it into the actual game yet.  But yeah, that's the idea.  We have several dev items on maps and we'd have you interact with them once they go in.

This compass has a new feature!

In all seriousness... Once we have maps, I suppose it will be possible for them to get out of date as the lay of the land changes?

So will people still write books about other people's books about other people's books about mugs?

I haven't changed anything about that, though the scholars have generally been writing about their research instead of commenting.  The necromancers get bored.

Ah, I get it, scholars are researchers and necromancers are academics. ;^)

[Neonivek]

You know what... Nevermind

[Verdant_Squire]

You mention that maps might be a thing that could happen with this update ... does this mean that we can expect an Adventurer's omniscient knowledge of the landscape will disappear soon, and we will have to rely on various maps or road signs to understand where we are going? Will these maps be subject to various degrees of inaccuracy, with some areas artificially inflating or shrinking depending on lack of knowledge or even cultural bias? Could these include landmasses that don't exist in the world or could they even be missing landmasses that haven't been discovered yet?

[Urist Tilaturist]

Bi Sheng invented the printing press in the 1040s, long, long before 1400. Gunpowder, if I may remind you, was also used before 1400, including in basic cannon.

[sewvi]

--woops forget about this--

[Paaaad]

Snip.

specific suggestions belong for the most part in the suggestion forum.

[sewvi]

Ok, sorry. Moved my message to the suggestions forum

[Inarius]

I support the question of Verdant_Squire.
The use of map can change a lot of thing, mostly (perhaps for the first time in a video game ?) the fact that we can have a distorted vision of the world. It will force the player to stay within the boundaries of the "known" world make a better game. The player could have a stronger impression of being a part of a culture and a land if it is the only one he knows. The "unknown land" could actually mean something.

However, I think I have read somewhere that Toady said that, for now, it won't actually be real maps.
So you will probably have to wait a long time before your question becomes topical.
Remember : the implementation of all of this is just accidental, the real things were poetry, dancing, music, and the way they are learnt.
Libraries, knowledges and maps are just here by chance

[dmatter]

I can actually attest to the fact that national anthems, as we know of them, did not come about before the 1400s. That was part of the nationalism package (which didn't really start until the 18th to 19th century I do believe). If you wiki it, you'll find a few national anthems may have been around earlier than that period, but weren't adopted as such until well after the date they were written (1900s for most in that category). Then again, most of our language oriented critters are a bit odd since they're all speaking one big happy dialect/language. Italy didn't even have 'one language' all the way up to the early 1900s and it was in the midst of the nation-state building project (most provinces had their own dialect, which may or may not have been romantic in origin).

While I'm on this sort of topic, the printing press was invented in China around (according to Wikipedia) 1041 to 1048 and seems to have been perfected in Korea. So, we could have printing presses in DF without it violating the soft 1400s issue.

Anywho, on to my !!!questions!!! (some of which might be answered):

1) Do you plan on having the number of philosophers/schools of thought vary depending on societal phenomena? IE,  can we expect to see things like an influx of philosophers during prolonged periods of war, sort of like the Axial age?

2) Someone mentioned Alexandria earlier. Which made me think of an article I read that talked about how most of Alexandria's knowledge was lost before it was burnt down. As such, are we going to eventually see certain historical figures implementing policies that erode the knowledge base? IE, such as cutting funding to maintaining libraries (and their books) and possibly even cutting academics. I'd also ask about (ideological) cronyism but that is probably so far down the road it isn't even worth asking about at this point.

Additionally, how are books going to be impacted by wear in fort mode? Is there going to be to a book maintenance labor, or, le gasp, a new sort of noble dealing exclusively with books and book maintenance?

3) There was also mention of forts within cities in the last set of questions, which makes me wonder will we (eventually) see boulevard sort of phenomena? IE, civ leaders demanding that large sections of walls be torn down and remain so for some cities/forts within cities? Or that a certain tile path always remain open to the 'heart' of a fort in fortress mode?

[tahu16]

If I understand, books will provide experience for a skill, when a dwarf is reading it (in the far, future version).
1) Will you lower the experience gaining of the current "Find out yourself" method of training for the balance? Will it take more time to train a legendary X without books in the future?

2)Are you planning to introduce other training helping methods, like the master-pretence relationship?

3)What are your plans about diseases?

[BFEL]

will we (eventually) see boulevard sort of phenomena? IE, civ leaders demanding that large sections of walls be torn down and remain so for some cities/forts within cities? Or that a certain tile path always remain open to the 'heart' of a fort in fortress mode?

In a more generalized sense relating to this do you plan to have characters that can force or otherwise threaten the player to do things, such as the above example? If so, what is the extent of it? We already have the "export the wrong thing/don't meet a mandate and a random dwarf dies" consequence, would we see similar consequences for missing a mandated road or such?

[DarkwingUK]

Hi Toady,
Thanks for all of the exciting updates! I saw that you are working on history books, and I was wondering whether the books you are talking about are just book titles like "This is a comparative biography of those three mayors, in such and such a style," or whether there will be books that record some of the significant events or citizens of our fortress that took place during fortress mode. I always loved the little stories that you get when you engrave a slab, but sometimes you have a dwarf that you really followed closely and when they die you would love to have some kind of recording of who they were and what they did in a more comprehensive way. As it stands, once they die you can't read about their preferences and friends and relationships while still in Fortress Mode as far as I can tell, so they become slightly lost. Also it would be amazing to have a little access to some of that history that we get in legends mode, but written from a citizen's point of view while still in fortress mode!
Thanks!!

[Solarius Scorch]

Given the master-apprentice model being introduced, will such pairs emerge in the fortress mode eventually? I mean for example Urist, Sr., the master craftsdwarf, would employ his son Urist, Jr. as a disciple. Jr. would be taking care of the simpler tasks, like working with cheap materials, therefore gaining skill points, while Sr. would supervise and give instructions, as well as of course do the hard parts.

The reason I'm so interested in this is because it'd make fortress life significantly more interesting, and it is also quite an important thing when recreating historical cities in general.

[Mel_Vixen]

Will certain nightcreatures, Vampires come to mind, be able to become students and teachers? Also will people actively search for new teachers to broaden their horizon once they learned everything from the old one? Would be nice to see wandering scholars. And finally will animals be part of the troupe? I don't remember if it came up earlier but it would nice to see trained animals, it could work similar to dances with some generated performances and some basic tricks.

Being a vampire in a wandering troupe would be a sweet deal i assume, the cattle comes on its own and as long you don't overdo it noone will notice that you guzzle a dwarf or two after the festivities.

[WordsandChaos]

Instrument string throwing is totally a feature...