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[Nopenope]

Toady has stated before that languages are not his speciality and he may want to delegate them to somebody in the community who is better with such things. If this is in the next release, he may want to look to modders to help him with language raws.

Didn't Threetoe major in ancient languages or something?

[Shonai_Dweller]

Ultimately it will just be just Urist plays the stone bongos, Dwarves dance. But there will be a reason Urist has chosen to play them which you can look into if you're really interested. I love that, starting with music, each Dwarf civilization will begin to develop its own cultural identity. Not just 'Dwarves' but 'jungle dwelling, God of crocodiles worshiping, banjo playing Dwarves.'

Just imagine, far traveling Lollo the Minstrel arrives at the fort and blows everyone's minds by playing the bongos in a way no Dwarf in this part of the world has ever heard. Old folks grumble about lack of respect (bongos being used exclusively at funerals in these parts), kids ditch work and cut their hair like Lollo. Culture spreads...

And if that all sounds boring, don't worry, apparently it all links in to martial arts and stances in the end.

[Knight Otu]

Well, obviously I was wrong about instruments not using the language files. Some of those are weird, though - trample or foot can be okay, but fatal, or bad?

It seems pretty odd that when notes and beats and such are named, the names aren't chosen randomly, but sequentially from the language file (cuthefi - cede - otoga are axe - back - bad for example), but I'm guessing that's temporary

[Henny]

This all is pretty cool, but "the usnusp trichord is the 15th, the 21st and the 25th (completing the octave) degrees of the quartertone octave scale" is pretty difficult to understand for a mere non-expert.

[JimiD]

I want to see some of our current music described in the style of Dwarf Fortress.  I could imagine a competition to guess the tracks.

[Naryar]

I feel those descriptions are overly complicated as well. I mean, dwarf fortress is a story generator right ?

The music just needs to have a simple description.

I mean, that is fine:

Code: [Select]

A devotional form of music directed toward the worship of Nokor Bonehell the Fate of Witches originating in The Glaze of Belts. The rules of the form are applied by composers of individual songs. The music is played on a tangath and a nish. It is performed in the agek rhythm.

The tangath always does the main melody, should be graceful and glides from note to note.

The nish always does the main melody and should be made sweetly.

The form has a well-defined multi-passage structure: a brief introduction and a brief theme and a brief series of variations on the theme possibly all repeated.

The introduction accelerates as it proceeds, and it is to become softer and softer. The passage is performed using the bemong scale.

The theme is slow, and it is to be very soft. The passage is performed using the bemong scale.

The series of variations slows and broadens, and it is to become softer and softer. The passage is performed using the berim scale.
One could make something simpler but I suppose a bit of fluff is good.

then it becomes overly complex

Code: [Select]

Scales are conceived of as two chords built using a division of the perfect fourth interval into eight notes. The tonic note is fixed only at the time of performance.

As always, the bemong heptatonic scale is thought of as two disjoint chords drawn from the fundamental division of the perfect fourth. These chords are named anam and izeg.

The anam tetrachord is the 1st, the 3rd, the 5th and the 8th degrees of the fundamental perfect fourth division.

The izeg tetrachord is the 1st, the 4th, the 7th and the 8th degrees of the fundamental perfect fourth division.

As always, the berim heptatonic scale is thought of as two disjoint chords drawn from the fundamental division of the perfect fourth. These chords are named mabdug and izeg.

The mabdug tetrachord is the 1st, the 2nd, the 5th and the 8th degrees of the fundamental perfect fourth division.

The agek rhythm is a single line with thirty-two beats divided into four bars in a 8-8-8-8 pattern. The beats are named ucat (spoken uc), ngarak (nga), enir (en), ugath (ug), lisig (li), etag (et), erong (er) and osed (os). The beat is stressed as follows:
| - x x - X - - - | x - - x x ! x - | X x x - x - - - | - X x - x - x - |
where ! marks the primary accent, X marks an accented beat, x is a beat, - is silent and | indicates a bar.
i mean what

Complexity is only good if it is meaningful. If it is only complexity for complexity's sake, and not for gameplay's/story's sake, it becomes a chore.

I'll take the creatures in DF example. If an animal is not here because it is an important part of gameplay (keas for their stealing and fun potential, elephants for war elephants or eventually work elephants, cats, dogs, GCS, etc) and/or important part of fluff (ravens for their symbolic power, elephants because they are highly symbolic and should be very important to civilizations that domesticate them, elk for being both symbolic and important grazers and prey) and/or memetic status in DF (carp, giant sponge, etc), then it should not be in DF and just causes clutter. (I'm looking at you, giant thrips or peach-faced lovebird men.)

Same for all other features. Adding various forms of crafting, lots of forms of crafting even is fine, considering dwarves ARE "fond of industry".

Are we going to describe the color, form and shape of the crystals contained into each single granite wall in my fort next ?

[Urist Arrhenius]

I think DF is more of a world generator, and that is all part of the world. Whether you include it in your stories about the world is up to you. People have found all sorts of different pieces of information interesting and valuable in their storytelling on these forums.

[reality.auditor]

Yep, these details are complete, utter overkill. Ah well.

[Man In Zero G]

Like all the intricate details in DF, I have a feeling you'll only see this if you go looking for it. I mean, do you really look at every single migrant to see what color hair they have? Do you really care what kind of cut your gem cutters are making? Of course not. Except that some people do. What details an individual player cares about depends entirely on that player. For the musically inclined types who're already familiar with the terminology, these descriptions are probably amazing. If you don't know (or care) what they're talking about, that doesn't mean somebody else feels the same way. As it is, I'm betting you'll only see these descriptions in adventure mode books about music, or when checking out a dwarf who's playing some and there will be a key to press to see the song description.
So if you don't care about the long, detailed description; don't look for it and you're not gonna be bothered with having to read it ever.

The really funny part of all this is how people have been gushing for days about how cool it would be to use the music descriptions to auto-generate DF music with software or by hand... Then Toady gives us descriptions with exactly the amount and type of information that would needed to actually start to be able to do it - and people complain about "too much detail".

[Neonivek]

Yep, these details are complete, utter overkill. Ah well.

It kind of is... It sounds more written for a text book on advanced music theory.

Than it is something to be explained to someone trying to understand it.

Heck imagine if someone described Jazz that way? Or a song.

really funny part of all this is how people have been gushing for days about how cool it would be to use the music descriptions to auto-generate DF music with software or by hand... Then Toady gives us descriptions with exactly the amount and type of information that would needed to actually start to be able to do it - and people complain about "too much detail".

For me it isn't about "Too much detail"

It is about no details I can use. I can certainly describe genres of music, songs, instruments, poems, or types of poems... but by far that is not QUITE how I would describe them unless I was writing an essay.

So I think it needs MORE details... some we can use.

[Man In Zero G]

So I think it needs MORE details... some we can use.

I definitely agree with you there. Like I said, to musical experts who understand the terminology, these descriptions are probably amazing; to the layman though, they are a pretty dense read. Some rephrasing for the average Urist would definitely be welcome - there's not a problem with too much detail, clearer language is what's needed.

[Dirst]

really funny part of all this is how people have been gushing for days about how cool it would be to use the music descriptions to auto-generate DF music with software or by hand... Then Toady gives us descriptions with exactly the amount and type of information that would needed to actually start to be able to do it - and people complain about "too much detail".

For me it isn't about "Too much detail"

It is about no details I can use. I can certainly describe genres of music, songs, instruments, poems, or types of poems... but by far that is not QUITE how I would describe them unless I was writing an essay.

So I think it needs MORE details... some we can use.

I think that Man in Zero G's point was that these details would allow a piece of software to generate random songs that a human would recognize as being the same style.  Now, whether it's meaningful to a typical human player is a different matter.  If a player only wants to scan the first few lines of a description for a broad overview, then just don't scroll down.

It's only overkill if it adversely affects gameplay in an FPS or memory-consuming sense.  We're well past worrying if a world's savefile will fit on a hard drive.

[Untelligent]

I think that Man in Zero G's point was that these details would allow a piece of software to generate random songs that a human would recognize as being the same style.

And perhaps one day Dwarf Fortress itself will be able to generate .midis from these details. Gotta plan ahead for these things.

[Baffler]

Yeah, I might not know what in Sam Hill it's talking about in the second half of that description, but it isn't like I need to understand it. A few additional lines of technical text aren't doing it any harm. Maybe I'll end up learning just what all of that means one day because of it. What I don't like about this is things like this:

The music is played on a tangath and a nish. It is performed in the agek rhythm.

That doesn't mean anything right now, and it's really important to understanding the form. Descriptions are going in of the instruments, but the rhythmic structures, and in some cases source poetry, aren't mentioned. Unless they're listed separately somewhere we can easily access, that might be a problem.

[Knight Otu]

The agek rhythm is described further below, but in a technical fashion. The instruments, Toady has said will be explained in the forms as well (if it weren't for some of the later names, I'd say the tangath is a large percussive instrument (translated from trample), and the nish a wind instrument (trade)). Since the musical and poetic forms will be named, chances are that they'll be accessible somewhere. The use of the in-game languages isn't really ideal here, though.