Thanks to lethosor, Inarius, MrWiggles, Dirst, Vattic, Witty, Knight Otu, Rockphed, Max^TM, Shonai_Dweller, cephalo and anybody I missed for helping to answer questions!
With all this talk of knowledge-sharing, are there any plans to make civilization-wide domestication of animal species possible? So you can e.g. domesticate a Roc or a Dragon in one fortress, and have it available at embark the next time?
It was the eventual idea to get to that final step, yeah. There are various associated difficulties with that, code-wise, so it wasn't an immediate thing.
Will singing songs of defeated foes mid-battle be interpreted as a taunt and/or cause opponents to re-evaluate how much of a threat you are (in either direction), or is there no such understanding currently?
They don't think of performances as taunts, but if you have a song about a relevant incident, it could pass the information and thereby alter your reputation and cause a morale change. There isn't a straightforward way of making that happen though, since we don't have full control set up in composition or improvisation (since it will be a lengthy process of creating an interface with the breadth for it).
This is more current than future, but does strength effect size in growing creatures? The dwarven child care thread has produced absolutely enormous dwarves and we were wondering if their high strength early in life is why.
There's that raw tag that makes tissue size dependent on strength for muscles. I don't know if it is related to your enormous babies.
There was already mentioned something that looks like bug. Dwarves see corpse and reacts like sentient was just killed before their very own eyes. At least this is how it is described in their personal thoughts. It goes without saying that there is big difference between seeing just lying corpse and witnessing actual killing in proccess.
Is it considered bug by you, or it is something intended?
It stores them differently, but yeah, they are quite troubled when considering the incident. It's a situation that should be improved, but we do want there to be some reaction.
With the new multi-species forts, how will creatures like trogs and gorlaks fit in? Will they be able to become citizens? I really want to make blind cave ogre shock troops now.
Gorlaks and animal people can go all the way. The slow-learner types generally haven't been given the option to become heroes or shift populations to sites. You could add the tags for that though.
Can the new Dwarf Scribes decipher the secrets of life and death from slabs and books necromancers 'donate' to your fortress after falling into a spike trap filled with were-hyenas?
will transcription of the secrets of life and death involve becoming a necromancer? I assume yes but have no idea how it will end up working.
Hmmm... I don't think it has the scribes themselves "read" the material and learn it. They just copy the symbols without understanding them. The scholars can read them, and interested dwarves on their free time. Perhaps the scribes should be given more credit, though they often don't have the scientific background for the scholarly works -- that hasn't stopped the other aspiring necromancers though.
Adventurer Role: Slayer of Night Creatures: Curses and exposure
(*) The slaves of night creatures could have extreme effects from proximity that also affect you if you make a business of hunting them.
What kind of "extreme effects" are there going to be?
He he he, who knows! More generally, the framework we want there would cover anything that you could get from "magic exposure", for any kind of magic -- we'd like to slowly add support for varieties of afflictions that can build up over time, co-opting the syndrome system mostly. We just need to support a few vectors for adding that kind of syndrome with the right amounts, and have it understand what's going on well enough to merge with other systems. I have no idea specifically what'll go in first. We might see the first ones with the artifact arc, but it depends on how those powers veer.
So, artists dig through their personal histories for inspiration now, that's cool. Do the engravers and sculptors do that right now? I seem to recall only seeing past history of the fortress location (and the fortress) in my works.
If they're not doing so already, will fortress artists draw on their own personal histories for inspiration now?
And: Will that personal history effect personalities in the next release? Dislikes gorlaks due to childhood trauma. Fearless since surviving dragon attack at age of 7 or some such stuff.
The engravers/crafters use an older routine that was more centered around doing stuff for the fort, where the new artists consider their whole experience. Presumably, fort artists should be a bit more fort-centered (though they use their own prefs oftentimes), but we'll have to see what happens as we get to the specific commissions and so on. We haven't done any personality changes as you describe, just the values stuff we mentioned.
Which of the upcoming arks are you considering for making various temperature related tweaks/adjustments/reworks, if any? Mainly concerning how temperature affects bodies of creatures in moderate conditions, but I'm curious if you have anything else planned in temperature nonetheless.
In it's current state, temperature is kind of wonky, though understandably it gets the job done for extremes, so it would make sense if nothing is planned at the current juncture.
I'm not sure when the next set of changes will occur here. Could happen with the artifact stuff if it blows that way, or it might wait until we get into some of the exploration stuff.
I remember a year or two ago when I researched the various effects of metals on the human system. (Lead leading to mental deficiencies, for example.) What became of that information?
Do you mean as an official project? I don't remember organizing that, though there was a lot going on during the medical additions. If it is posted on the suggestion forum, then it is probably hanging out in the notes somewhere.
When an unskilled fool joins a performance and totally blows it, will this be reflected by the audience and other performers' reactions? So, can they in a sense crash the party, ruin the mood? Does their poor performance only affect themselves, eg. "Urist is known to be a terrible dancer" or does the outcome of that one fool's sloppy performance affect how audiences view the rest of the performers and the performance overall?
Similarly, if one performer in a dance/song/what-have-you that requires at least two participants performs well, and the other poorly, does the performance of one affect the performance of the other? (eg, if one does horribly, do their mistakes prevent the other from performing to the best of their abilities as well, such that they interfere with one-another not just on a reputation level but by actually mucking up the skill rolls of the others involved.)
Yeah, the overall performance quality can be affected by an unskilled performer, though people can tease apart the performers so it isn't a total loss in terms of rep. If you have a troupe, you can prevent people from spoiling your performances, but if you are just starting up a song in a bar by yourself, anybody might jump in. You could strategically pick a form without additional voices. It doesn't yet let you glare at people or otherwise establish your solo status in advance.
Rolls are currently independent. It would be funny if people could trip each other though, with saving-throw type rolls to recover both dancers, and so on.
Do you plan on adding any features of DFhack to the main game? Things like additional interfaces or adding spatters with reactions?
I don't know what the features are. Reactions and interactions will be expanded over time (I expect the upcoming artifact arc will have various additions).
How does reactions to performances work?
Is the emotion system involved, more than in a basic "good performance = happy feelings" way. For instance, could a ribald poem (intended to praise a lover) make a dwarf randy or embarrassed?
It goes a touch beyond good/bad, making use of prefs and a few traits vs. content, but it isn't super-duper-interesting either.
How much are festivals implemented for adventure mode in the upcoming release? I assume you won't be able to take part in the games yet, but can you see them happening?
Also, Talking of goblin dancers coming to visit, will it be possible as a non-goblin adventurer to visit the local dark fortress and take part in their poetry reading sessions (assuming you aren't at war)? Or will the inhabitants all try to kill you the moment you arrive?
Nah, we wanted to get there as kind of a culmination of the adv stuff for this release, but it just isn't in the cards time-wise. I'm not sure when we'll get to it now. Maybe when we add candles. A lot of the processions have candles.
They still all try to kill you over there as part of their ethics. We'll have to wait for things to be more nuanced before you can visit.
Do festivals have any flavor text as for the exact reason they're being held? (like how wars have reasons for the conflict?) Will goblins have festivals in celebration of murder or the recent pillaging of the mountainhome?
Yeah, there's information for every festival in legends mode about why it was organized. The themes can depend on the society.
I was amazed to encounter a cheetah hunting an ibex recently while exiting travel mode. Did you put anything in to encourage this behavior or did the game just do that?
There's a predator-prey unit reaction type, I remember that much, for LARGE_PREDATOR to use on the others. I don't recall if I made the predators chase properly, but if they did, they do. They won't eat the bodies or anything.
It was inevitable.
Speaking of, are there plans to make that less of an omni-purpose response to everything?
Yeah, that's the response when there isn't anything else programmed. It has to be handled instance by instance. Over time things will improve.
Will a god depicted as a dragon be able to bless a adventurer/history-figure (that do many things in the name of that god) to become a dragon/humanoid dragon and curse defilers to become kobolds? This is way too specific but could work about the same with gods depicted as animals.
As different interactions are added to the game, and different goings-on, we'll have more leeway to categorize and group and restrict based on qualities. Hopefully we'll be able to get into that a bit for the artifact release, since we'll have the creation myth generator to leverage and that's the point of it.
Once we get the ability to make differently-sized clothing for our non-dwarf citizens, will traders pay more for clothing in their size?
Hmm... I'm not sure if they'd care. They have price alterations based on random stuff over the years, but I don't think they consider that. Could be wrong. Could go in when I do it.
Toady is the fortress mode economy ever going to return? if so how and if not why?
We were hoping to do a bit this time, but it didn't turn out that way. It's hard to do it justice without some more information, and we're going to be setting up a lot of the framework in the release after the artifact release. After that release, we'll have outlying dependent sites, status, customs, property, law and all sorts of useful stuff. Then we'll have to see where we branch -- we could get right into production and caravans and agriculture, or we might go somewhere else. The framework is meant to handle the economy, the justice system, and more nuanced diplomacy -- many avenues will open at once. That's three big pushes down the line, so it would be pointless to speculate more.
Toady I remember you saying something about the player affecting adventure mode personality's, can you choose both personality facets and beliefs and does it work like attribute distributions with points that you spend to increase or lower your value or do you just select a value you want?
Edit:with the addition of bards and traveling musicians will there be followers who's motivation is not death and glory?
You can either randomize your personality and values according to your creature type and culture (just tapping 'r' until you get a paragraph/needs you like), or you can go in and set your values/personality facet by facet manually (in a gigantic slider list). Your personality in the latter case is still restricted by creature type (so you can't make a very altruistic goblin), but you can set as many values outside of your culture as you want (instead of the standard 3 or so). It isn't based on a point system, since one personality isn't supposed to be better than another (though there will always be min-maxy settings that you can use to make your character have fewer needs, etc.).
Yeah, you can have your performance troupe that just wants to perform, with no wanna-die checks at all.
Wood : not floating?
I've been a bit curious as to why wood does not currently float , I understand it might be a code issue , but shouldnt it be pretty simple to implement togheter with a direction in which it floats in case its in a river?
Are small fishing boats planned? This could potentially be combined with other fishing tools such as nets, cages and so on for catching specific species.
I know there's been talk about harbors for ocean / trade rutes , but how about using them for basic fortress use both on surface and underground? Like a dock for those sea boats or a way to get from one specified point to another with a boat. Even though we might not get "ocean traders" at the moment , it would have been nice to be able to build a harbor / dock that could be interpretated by the world game so that other entities could be in connection with you as long as they also have harbors. Even though traders and diplomats wouldnt appear due to current limitations while playing ingame , at least on paper and when you are playing another fortress in another location.
Floating: it's just a somewhat annoying problem CPU-wise, and low-priority, so it hasn't been done.
Once we manage to get boats floating around there's no reason not to have them visit a seaside or navigable-river fort, but I don't anticipate doing it before that. We're hoping to do small boats when we do boats in general, to make the human waterfronts interesting especially at first, and then for boaty purposes.
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Topic: Future of the Fortress (Read 1883429 times)