Print

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

[mangulwort]

Will Kobolds dance in the next update? In the raws they seem to not understand the concept of music but Koblds must have some way to express joy when they successfully steal treasure.

[Fieari]

Will the new knowledge "tech forest" be accessible in the RAWs?

If I think up a new fantasy philosophy, can I have the philosophers in game discover it?  Or when the history department at my local IRL university thinks up a new historiography method, do we have to wait for it to be hard coded in or can we just add it to the RAWs ourselves?

For that matter, what about ideas that aren't just ambiguously correct, but are clearly wrong?  People wrote books and chased down clearly false ideas plenty of times in history. It's a part of science too, to propose an idea that might not work out.

Seeing a civilization that, for example, firmly believes in the physicality of darkness (and light being the lack of said darkness) would be fascinating.  Or seeing libraries devoted to a false idea that side tracked all their researchers into not being able to develop a particular technology would be amazing.

Two reasons a civilization might not have a technology-- either they aren't studying, or they're studying the wrong things.

[MrTimms]

Will the new knowledge "tech forest" be accessible in the RAWs?

If I think up a new fantasy philosophy, can I have the philosophers in game discover it?  Or when the history department at my local IRL university thinks up a new historiography method, do we have to wait for it to be hard coded in or can we just add it to the RAWs ourselves?

Please, based Toady.

[Putnam]

Have you heard about weighted A* search which introduces a constant factor w (with w > 1) to A*'s admissible heuristic to improve execution time by trading off the optimality of the results to be no worse than w times the optimal solution ?

Suggestions go to the Suggestion Forum. There have many threads about path finding. Necro one or start a new one.

I might just do that but it'll end up being quite long. I'd prefer not to waste his (and my) time by writing too much about things he is already aware off.
In the interest of saving everyone's time I think this is a perfectly valid yes/no-question before writing a long and formal suggestion post. And I've tried my best to keep it simple without sounding like I'm suggesting he should do x or y.

Weighted A* is one of these basic concepts quite a few other things are based on. To my surprise it seems to be rare to encounter it outside of lectures on autonomous robotics/driving but to assume he never heard of them feels like underestimating Toady.

To put a wrap on this: I'm almost entirely sure that Dwarf Fortress already uses weighted A*, at least based on the fact that pathing has various weights that you can adjust in-game, with the default being 2.

[expwnent]

To put a wrap on this: I'm almost entirely sure that Dwarf Fortress already uses weighted A*, at least based on the fact that pathing has various weights that you can adjust in-game, with the default being 2.

He was talking about a particular enhancement which does not produce optimal paths but runs faster than A*. Fun fact: you can actually prove that the only way to make A* faster (explore fewer vertices) without sometimes getting suboptimal paths is by using a better distance heuristic. The proof is on wikipedia if you're interested.

For users: decrease the Normal path cost to 1 in your forts to make A* faster. DF uses the High traffic designation weight in the distance heuristic, so if actual path weights are closer to that, it will explore fewer vertices.

[reality.auditor]

Looks like tech tree will be partally procedurally generated? At least, if history knowledge is considered, well, "knowledge", it would have to be not only procedural (not created upfront and set in stone), but also dynamic (changing with time).

And about false knowledge... this is pretty hard topic, as you can be mistaken in gazilion ways. In fact, humanity is always mistaken - it just gets less wrong with time. Fortunately, it is enough.

[Cobbler89]

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

[Rose]

I wouldn't be surprised if we get books about themselves.

[endlessblaze]

I wouldn't be surprised if we get books about themselves.

This is "on the self" a gold bound book. It menaces with spikes of ruby. The book details the creation of itself, it as often praised by scholars for its tendency to stir self reflection in the reader.

[Knight Otu]

Will the new knowledge "tech forest" be accessible in the RAWs?

If I think up a new fantasy philosophy, can I have the philosophers in game discover it?  Or when the history department at my local IRL university thinks up a new historiography method, do we have to wait for it to be hard coded in or can we just add it to the RAWs ourselves?

It's pretty unlikely for this time around. Raws will apparently influence the available topics so we get books like "Anatomy of the Magma Crab" or "Caring for your Plump Helmet farm", but I'd expect that RAWification of innovations will have to wait until (or even until after) the innovations affect what the civ can do.

[Urist_McDagger]

that implies some investigators will need to be at least well-read if not skilled in various topics (there aren't currently joint research projects).

Does that mean that, eventually, we will have hunters that have read books about specific critters and know how they usually act in a state of terror? I.e. that we will have hunters that do not run up next to an elephant before it has dealt a lethal blow?

If so; will this be expanded upon to enable hunters/players to aim for lethal points in sentient creatures/critters, if they've read a book about the biology of, say, humans?

[Eric Blank]

Will Kobolds dance in the next update? In the raws they seem to not understand the concept of music but Koblds must have some way to express joy when they successfully steal treasure.

They might not be able to sing, but damn can they dance!

Alternatively, their expression of joy may be obnoxious screaming.

[Zavvnao]

With the 1400 cut-off date, could we expect world-gen ruins that hint at more advanced things you can't be build by any of the civs?

I mean things at most like hints of how the ancient Romans had a gear-like computer for guessing stars, and ancient Egyptians understood steam power, but wheres just at novelty levels?

Also, for elves and dwarves, I could see either or both knowing a lot about sound like the ancient Maya, who had temples that could turn the sound of clapping into the sound of a bird. The acoustic understanding would fit dwarves living in winding, underground places. Elves, it would fit their nature and such in a  more natural way.

[Shonai_Dweller]

How will people discover new knowledge at the beginning of time? Will worldgen just create wisemen who then write books or pass on teachings through teacher/apprentice relationships? Or will gods n' demons grant the knowledge?

I kind of like the idea at the moment where one badass ranger journeys into the depths of the world and tames the giant olms through sheer force of will.

[Ribs]

Will scribes make copies of important books to distribute them, possibly to other libraries across the world?