Thanks to vjmdhzgr, Inarius, MrWiggles, Button, falcc, Knight Otu, NJW2000, Rockphed, Miuramir, Dirst, WordsandChaos, Alfrodo, Mr S and anybody I missed for helping to answer questions this time!
May I inquire which categories of reputation there are exactly?
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?
We have hero, buddy, grudge, animal training partner, violent brawler (instigating non-lethal attacks on non-hostiles), psychopath (instigating lethal attacks on non-hostiles), trade partner, friendly, killer, murderer, adventuring companion, member of respected group, member of hated group, enemy fighter, friendly fighter, bully, brigand, loyal soldier, monster, storyteller, poet, bard and dancer -- these can be tracked variously at the individual-individual or individual-entity level, first through active rumors and then more abstractly, though not all of them are saved over the long haul and only occur when rumors are active.
How much, if any, control do you plan to give the player over caps like [army invader numbers]? I only ask because we have editable pop caps and the like so players can adjust depending on how good a PC they have and how few FPS they can handle.
There are lots of numbers that could afford to come out at this point. Not really sure when it'd happen.
Is there any intention of bringing some equivalent to the pre-DF2014 quest menu back?
I liked having a list of things people asked me to do and where they were, without having to search submenus for relevant site-names.
There are some problems with storing goals the way they were done before, in that we don't want the original giver to be centralized (except for certain things like squad tasks or kidnap relatives) and we need to handle imperfect information and so on, but we do need to add a way to promote and remember and see the rumors/tasks you are working on in their own space. There might need to be some sort of prompt in the conversation to let you flag something, since you can get a lot of information dumped on you at once to the point where you wouldn't be able to flag what you want easily in the log screen after even one conversation (especially with all the starting home town data in your mind), but in-conversation meta-prompts have the issue of being anti-immersive. Perhaps there's an in-between solution that isn't too obscure. Universal remember button? Classified recommendations from log screen? There's too much data for the ubiquitous date or faction/storyline ordered journal/quest-list to really work by itself now.
Will artists or otherwise copy other's performances without the original performer explicitly teaching them? Can performances or stories be circulated independent from the original performer?
Yeah, they can pick up the knowledge by being spectators, but this doesn't mean they'll be talented. There are practical experience measures for each form as well as general skills -- if the copying artist doesn't have practical experience, they can still use their skills to make an effort during their first performance, and they'll build up experience over time. Abstract knowledge of forms and specific works can also be learned from books, which'll allow the reader to attempt them. It's a little generous in that you can pick up a form without a lot of specific examples -- in real life, you wouldn't get all the nuances from a few examples, even if you were skilled, but it's kind of a cpu issue to be too fussy with the checks.
Do you have any new kinds of divine retribution in mind? Inflicting a random FB syndrome seems like low-hanging fruit, although maybe it doesn't work as well for world gen desecration events.
Nothing in mind for this release. It seems like future temple desecrations will all be in-game now, and not just part of world gen, so perhaps it's best if those are inflicted upon the unsuspecting player as they arise.
About vampires, will the creature (after they are transformed) stay in the fortress, even if being caught (and are seen as ennemy) ? In legends mode, usually, they flee from their location just after being discovered to save their life, which is quite coherent with their goal (immortal life).
Ideally we'd have all the world gen complications transferred over, including the suspicion that slowly builds as they fail to age, but it isn't in there yet.
In current version, there are 2 curses, one in worldgen that can make a npc into a vampire when he offend a deity and one at gameplay time when you attract the sight of a mummy in a tomb .
None of those curses can be currently dispelled/removed in any ways out of death, so assuming there may be some more curses type in the future, will there be additionally some way to dispell/remove them ?
Yeah, I imagine it'll happen as an expansion to the interaction system over time. I'm not sure precisely when -- we may or may not get to it in the next round that comes with the myth/artifact stuff, but there's a lot on the table for that one.
Will enough temple desecrations result in your fortress showing symptoms of an evil biome? Dead rising, raining blood, etc?
The evil biomes from pre-history aren't related to desecrations, so it didn't come up. One of the targets for the myth generator is to explain why those places are the way they are, and that'll involve relating it to some mechanic or another. I'm not sure what that'll mean for temple desecration.
Will there be guards or anything to protect temples from desecration and give a challenge to adventurer looking for vampirification ? (especially as vampire curse is more like a big bonus instead of an actual curse in adventure mode)
There's nothing like that now.
will the kind of courses be specific to the gods? I mean, the god of death would make vampires and zombies, the one of hunting werebeast, the one of health/sickness perhaps FB syndromes or something else (if is planned to have different that kind of things as courses), and so on?
It would be better to keep everything in character -- we've had such a small curse menu for the gods to choose from up until now that we didn't bother. As we get more options, I think divisions will happen naturally.
Would temple desecration in destroyed towns still cause curses? And how will animal men/women populations interact with destroyed sites in future or current interactions?
Yeah, the gods don't care about having active worshippers at a site, so toppling statues in ruined temples would not be recommended. I'm not sure what the second question means -- like will they move in and have little animal person ruin-warming parties at the temples? Or something about the current outcast groups? I don't remember if they still get cursed after the main civ gets chased out or how that works.
What are your plans (if any) to present legends mode information to players in a more organic (in-game) way?
The only legends mode presentations in fort/adv mode are organic (engravings, rumors, etc.). What's missing is a more systematic way of doing it, and the issues there are with game-spoiling information about e.g. invasion forces heading for your fort that you shouldn't know about, etc. I don't recall if there are also technical issues with loading up a legends-type mode while the fort is active... I don't think so.
Will regular creatures with the building destroyer tag be cursed from toppling statues?
Will temple defilers be cursed 100% of the time?
Yeah, I think a strategic temple might be bad for an invasion force. This mechanic will certainly need to be updated as we go along, at least in terms of consecrating the temple so it can't be placed instantly through the interface as if that somehow communicates with the gods directly.
Speaking of temples, are every deities going to have temples in a worldgen ?
And will they be built in random odd place or will there be some checks to have them in more appropriate locations (difficult to imagine death-based deities temples being tolerated in a city ruled by a lord that is worshipping life-based deities , or good-based deities temples being built in evil regions)
I haven't changed which deities have temples in world gen from the current release. Ideally there'd be hidden temples in cities and isolated temples in the wilds later on.
Toady, are you getting close enough to hint at what might make the cut in myth generation for the upcoming release?
Also, are there any raw changes that are firm enough that you feel comfortable discussing them yet? (And hopefully at least part of the myth generator is in the raws...)
The upcoming release is part 1 of the taverns arc, which will be followed by part 2 (Presumably? Toady might be bored of fun and games by now). Then the artifact arc is due to begin. So it's going to be quite a while (years?) before we see the myth generator.
Nope! I won't know what's in or out until we're into the bug-fixing cycle when we update the dev pages (and even after that it'll be subject to change of course). I expect large swaths of the myth generator to make it into world gen params, but I don't have any idea what kind of raw/objects changes to expect.
The gambling/games/price-setting/rent/etc. part of the tavern release was made problematic by the lack of economy, and we might wait on that until the value of things is more natural and coins are floating around again (or whatever ends up happening). The myth generator goes in with the artifact release (there might be one release there or we might find a good split point).
In the next version humans can live with the dwarves. Will we be able to make armor that would fit them? Or would they be forced to use the armor bought off the human merchants?
Related, will human merchants sell armor and clothing dwarf sized, or will they still bring sizes completely useless for a dwarf?
Handling the non-dwarf clothing production problem is one of the remaining issues. It'll be handled before release (I think with some new workshop options). I'm not sure I'll get to merchants though. I think there are some archaic issues with that code which would need to be handled.
Will History ever have events that are less solo-fights and wars and more like... A group of people teaming up on a monster? or is the solo meant to reflect that he is the "leader"?
I know that the old "How the HECK did that dwarf kill the Bronze Colossus" thing is odd... but I am always kind of incredulous that basically in this world where Godzilla roams the earth that instead of armies, teams, or groups of people trying to take it down... People just decide to do it solo all the time.
And
How much longer are we going to be stuck with oddly fragile megabeasts? or to rephrase: At what point are you going to work on fixing up relative strengths in world gen?
World gen doesn't have any respect for parties/companions/whatever in world gen that are used in adventure mode or in dwarf mode squads -- it would be good to have these things.
I'm not sure when we'll next be looking at world gen combat in terms of survivability etc.
If you ever hae the game to the point where dwarves can be impaled in fortress mode, will the dwarves both be depressed yet have good thoughts from being impaled on their favorite wood?
If they were alive, it would probably work that way now, though I don't remember if "upright weapon" buildings are admire-able.
I'm guessing that kobolds won't be able to take part in poetry and written traditions. But, will they be able to play music and therefore participate in other cultures that way? Could a kobold develop a new musical style or dance style, to which a poetic form might become attached? As I understand it, there's some cross pollination between poetic forms, music and dance.
Yeah, they currently have some music, but the difficulty would be getting it to pass around, since kobolds don't integrate into other societies well. If somebody else observed a kobold musical form in secret (which effectively limits it to you and your friends)... hmmm, I don't think they'd set words to it, since we only have poetic forms or specific poems associated to musical forms at the time of the forms creation, and new poetic forms don't consider music. You'd need to have a derived music form that has the kobold form as its ancestor, but we haven't done direct evolution of forms of the same kind yet. Specific musical compositions can have attached poetic forms, but that might require the parent musical form to have an associated poetic form as well. In any case, there are some avenues but I don't think it gets all the way there yet.
Will you be able to lie about achievements, like persuading a demon you that it was you(ergo, not you) who wiped out the entire Murderfurnace civilization single-handedly?
We haven't gotten into false rumors yet... it is kind of a can of worms. The current rumor system would support you saying whatever, and people would believe it and pass it around and reputations would change, but there aren't any detections/reality checks/etc. for them to use, so it would be too powerful. If non-players can do it there would be lots of bug reports.
Will there be an easy way to view the values of a civilization aside from reading the profiles of fortress residents?
We don't currently have anything like that for next time, though you can pick up some information from books and so on.
In the example master-apprentice situation you described, would the apprentice Dwarves actual medical skills increase as they study, or just the abstract 'knowledge of medicine'. I mean, how much of a real-game impact does this have at the moment?
Knowledges are all linked to skills, so the doctors and engineers can actually pick up some skills that are used in regular jobs, though that wasn't the focus.
Will scholars be attracted to your fortress based on what literature you have? As in, if you have a lot of books related to medicine will you get visitors with medical skills looking to study there? Perhaps we'd finally have a reliable way to train doctors.
We aren't to the point yet where specific books are considered. Hopefully sometime.
Seeing at how the worst murdering rampages/crimes can be done in complete impunity in adventure mode, will there be something done about it in next version that is more appropriate than those "spits" or calling one a murderer without any more consequence ?
Will there be real consequence to a NPC/player actions making himself "enemy" to a civ ? And with civs getting different ethics than an entity, will the enemity propagate toward other allied civs or will it stay local only ?
Will we see in the future the justice system of the fortress mode taking effect in adventure mode too with some kind of guard/hammerer/assassins squads dispatched by location leaders to bringing people to justice for minor crimes or trying to put a lethal end to their murder spree ?
We're not doing anything with this for the next version. The justice framework will begin to go in with the release after the artifact release, though it'll happen in stages.
when can we expect to see smaller entities (bandits and criminal organizations, animal men tribes, rebels) and roaming encounters (*) interacting with our fortresses directly? Is that type of thing covered with the whole visitation dealie?
I'm not sure when. When is always a hard question. We've wanted to do things with megabeasts and smaller groups for some time now. It might be more natural once some of your forts have to deal with their own hill/deep dwarves (which is on the short-term list a few large releases down the line).
Is the current difficulty of the living dead (particularly zombies raised in worldgen) intended? For that matter, are goblins/etc supposed to be as weak as they are currently?
No, I'd like to change them, though I only have a partial impression of where they are right now. Goblins should presumably be more variously equipped, have more skill levels, and have some interesting special guests, at the very least, in addition to the tactical stuff we've talked about before.
When will better conversation be on the cards?
Things have changed slowly over time, and I don't think there'll be a specific push. They'll just continue to change. Dwarf mode is difficult -- there's a bit there, but the main things people talk about have been omitted for speed reasons.
For those of us who miss DF Talk and would like to hear from you about all the recent development in new episodes, can we volunteer to help somehow? We could collect a list of good questions for you to discuss in an episode and do the audio editing from the raw take to make it sound nice, for instance. That would probably reduce the work involved for you to pretty much just the time you were talking on mic.
We have the Q&A emails sitting there, and the audio editing doesn't take all that long. The main issue is that we don't have a general topic in mind, since we've done the broad strokes in past episodes, and it's lackluster repeating the dev logs or future of the fortress replies (that is, talking about specific current developments). By the time we could do an episode about, say, the myth generator, in any level of planned-out detail, it'd already be being programmed and come up on the dev log or in here. So that's the main issue. We just haven't settled into a pattern of topic selection that works reliably over the long haul without being repetitive.
So, to the Toady One, I ask a Big question and a Small question.
Big:
Right now, dwarves are traumatized by the idea of dead goblins, even after centuries of violence between these peoples. Will the emotions system draw more on family and politics in the future to correct for this, or perhaps will ethics draw more granular distinctions between species and not just all sentience? The current method of managing this reaction, of systematically traumatizing dwarves until their personality is nothing but the emotional equivalent of scar tissue, is somewhat distressing.
Small:
As libraries, books, scholars, and the various forms of "hard" knowledge are added to the game, will the player be able to influence what ideas are generated or spread? Could propaganda be manufactured and cultural education eventually be implemented?
Having the dwarven culture normalize genocide is also kinda distressing... but there should probably be some respect given to the situation between long-warring civilizations of any kind. I'm not really sure how much that helps with mental trauma. Regardless of species, it is a little odd when finding a pile of long-dead bodies causes many individual bad emotional experiences.
You could always arrange for books and scholars you don't like to be dumped, as with nobles. I don't have research direction settings, but that seems like something that might be part of the official will of the fortress. Perhaps with the library/temple embark scenarios we'll see some entity positions that directly relate to that kind of thing.
You've hinted before that the current dev cycle may lay the groundwork for a future reworking of technology during gameplay- technologies that you will or won't have access to depending on research, with the ability to advance your fortress's knowledge by investing in research. If so, do you also envision- whether in fort mode or simply in worldgen- situations where a civilization would lose access to a technology they once had?
That seems like something that might happen -- since we don't yet have a link between the knowledge (as contained in books and scholars) and the practical aspects, it's hard to say how it'd work. Technologies that are learned by lots of people and have lots of physical examples laying around seem harder to lose than a random non-obvious observation about the geometry of the atmosphere or whatever, but it would almost have to be taken case by case, in terms of how it permeates the larger society and whether the form of its permeation contains the elements of its re-invention/discovery (that would also be related to how easily it would spread/be stolen I suppose).
I noticed that there is a menu in the units lists dedicated to dead dwarves. Is there a reason why we cannot see any information about them after they are dead (in the live units list we can see their thoughts, preferences, and relationships. In the latest version especially, because slabs seem much less likely to indicate who killed them (usually just says bled to death), the dwarves very much disappear when they are dead.
Now that there are songs, dances, and books with topics, do you plan some way of designating a person to be memorialised through art, similarly to how it was possible by engraving slabs?
I think I removed all that information because the tense of it makes it seem like the dwarf is still alive, and scrubbing the information also made the dwarf seem... deader. It'd be fine to leave it available, but it needs to be cleaned up. I haven't done any of the art commissioning stuff. When we get to that, there are more possibilities now, but it's hard to say what'll be first.
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Topic: Future of the Fortress (Read 1880852 times)