Thanks to falcc, Knight Otu, Putnam, Eric Blank, Shonai_Dweller, vjmdhzgr, Putnam, Inarius, iceball3, Vattic, LordBaal and anybody I missed. I'm going to leave this thread open for a while and start up a new one once we have the next path forward up on the dev pages. We'll do some bug-fix releases before we get around to that.
Regarding that, what sorts of issues are you running into with 32/64-bit compatibility? The main issue being mentioned is the difference in sizes of integer types (namely "long"), which I suppose you could resolve with fixed-width types (stdint.h), although it would be a pain to rewrite an entire project (or even just the (un)serialization code) to use those.
I haven't tried it with DF (I just got the test project running), but we should get to that once we get through the bug-fix releases. Fortunately most of the project already uses bit-respecting typing (int32_t etc.), but there might be some trickiness choosing the right typedefs on every system, especially if we want save compatibility all around (not that it matters so much since the average 64 bit save will probably use too much memory to load in 32 bits anyway). Knowledgeable people have been PMing me tips, though we'll really have to see on the first big compile if it just splatters all over the place.
Is adding a default controller that leads a unit to a relative or nearby site or even just keeps them from sleeping eternally possible?
If I make some toys and "accidentally" leave them lying around, will they play with them?
There's already code to add controller for people heading home, but it wasn't working well since it couldn't always find a home and didn't look very hard. The new release has some improvements, but we could afford some more.
If you drop toys near children, they should play with them, I think.
I assume that the current growth rates of trees will be adjusted, because they grow ridiculously fast right now, but will trees grow at realistic speeds or at accelerated speeds? If the latter is the case, probably because of gameplay reasons, how much faster will they grow?
1. Did you intend for the tree density to increase quickly over time (and not just some of the time in some embarks, but always)?
2. If so, was this to remove strain on hardware?
3. Do you currently have methods in place to prevent tree density from increasing? If so, what?
4. Have those methods, if any, changed from DF2014 to DF2015?
I'm not really sure how it'll end up. We need to deal with the youngest trees differently, since there's that pop when they get a full trunk and that happens too soon in the process. They can probably afford to grow slowly overall, so that you feel you are losing your forest by chopping it down, but I don't really have a feel for how it ends up after 20 years currently. Tree density should eventually depend on the rainfall, if that's broken -- there's a water use field that gets used during initial placement, but I don't recall how it acts or if it even exists after play begins. Nothing has changed for this time that I remember.
What's the plan for paper-making industry? Will there be multiple types of "paper", like papyrus, large leaves, parchment, velum, hemp, dwarven beard hair fiber paper, plump helmet pulp paper? Will we be able to use paper to make other objects, like paper crafts, paper charms, paper windows or paper armor?
Will taverns exclusively dispense alcohol, or would it be possible to make something like coffee and tea with a different syndrome? If a food item comes with an alcohol-like syndrome, a magic mushroom for instance, is there a mechanic by which dwarves would recognize that food as syndrome-inducing or would they just chow down haphazardly?
If one were to mod in a civilization that was intelligent but did not have hands, like a race of dragons or alien blobs or whatever, would they be able to recruit visitors to manufacture items for them? If they permit slavery or are baby snatchers, would they be able to recruit captives to manufacture items for them?
We have three branches for the release: papyrus, paper (from cloth plants) and parchment. Papyrus is easier to use if you can find it on the map (you make sheets directly at the farmer's workshop. Otherwise you'll have to set up a mill+press for paper (mill to slurry, press slurry to sheet), or go through the parchment process: calcium carbonate stones at kiln -> quicklime, quicklime at ashery -> milk of lime, hide + milk of lime at tanner -> parchment sheet. Currently in the game, a parchment sheet is called a "vellum sheet" when made from a cow (of any age). Otherwise, it is called "<animal> parchment sheet". These materials can currently only be use to make quires or scrolls (with rollers). Then you can bind the quires into codices with bindings.
The "drink" item is still special and is what the "immoderate" personality trait interacts with. They don't recognize where syndromes come from.
You can't use reactions/jobs outside of your entity, so if you didn't have the jobs to begin with, visitors don't bring their use. We haven't expanded dwarf mode to support non-dwarfy things.
You mentioned "books disguised as levers". Is this going to be a thing? Will I one day go in a library and try to take a book, only for the game to be like "Congratulations you found a secret lever HERE HAVE SOME MAGMA"
Will there be more things disguised as things? (Will it possible to learn the true nature of disguised things from people who know about it?) What about secret doorways?
And on that note, long-term goal question: Will there be the possibility of automatic lever handling? So that I can assign dorfs to guard lever-controlled doors, who will pull the lever when someone friendly wants through, or assign certain lever positions to certain alarm settings...
Who knows when. First chance would probably be the ruin-diving treasurey stuff.
The pathing is difficult but not impossible for the lever job. I suppose it's different from the one-way door problem, which is impossible in our path component system. But I don't have any plans for any of it.
So, if immigrants now bring their values with them, does this mean that now you will be able to take say a goblin (or an elf? not sure which) into your fort and make him a butcher so he can butcher dwarf (etc.) corpses since goblins (or elves?) are ok with butchering intelligent beings?
Nope. The interface for building jobs still uses your base civ. I'm not sure how it could work -- perhaps you'd have to assign the unusual critter to the workshop profile or something.
Will we see an embark scenario where we found a new Civ all on our own?
I'm not sure what that would mean, since the overall civ is more like a culture in a lot of ways. We're hoping from the beginning of scenarios to have the ability to be much more split from your monarch/parent civ. I don't know about inventing a new civ from scratch though, outside of some sort of future editor.
Will immigrant egg-layers like kobolds or a (presumably modded) animalman like a platypus man be able to use nest boxes?
I'm not sure. I haven't changed anything, so whatever woes modders have experienced will still be woes. Now they are more likely to be fixed though, as I learn about them, since the visitors are a vanilla feature, aside from the pathing stuff I don't know how to fix.
If it is not going to be changed in the next release in order to make foreign race AI soldiers use equipment from their own civilization; what equipment are the animal people that now take up residence in sites going to be given since they have no entity of their own with equipment to use?
I can't be sure since it seems inconsistent overall, but the integrated animal people pops look like they get added like other site pops, and the independent animal people heroes get set to the parent civ of the site they first settle at, so my closest guess is that they'd act like those.
Will there be roadside inns outside of towns in the next update? I don't recall you mentioning in the devblog, just in the development notes.
Nope, I didn't get to it. I don't have enough of a framework yet for small places that aren't like the larger sites without killing memory -- it might all be grouped together now when I do little lumber sites and so on.
Are petitions purely a player decision, or do other members of your civ have opinions? In other words, can unpopular decisions in immigration policy result in poor public happiness and unrest?
Nobody cares right now, but as with justice decisions, it would fit to have them care.
Can we shout an argument for everybody in earshot to hear to start trouble faster, or do we have to piss off everybody individually?
I haven't tried it. You can shout your values out. I just don't know how many people take you up on your offer.
Well, what I really want to know is how it'll interact with reactions which take more than one stacking item. This doesn't come up much in vanilla obviously, but let's say I make a mixed-fruit brewing reaction that requires two fruit and produces 10 fruit punch. I want to limit the size of the product to 20, to keep it in line with other brewing reactions in terms of how fast you can crank it out. So I use [MAXREACTIONS:2] or whatever the tag is.
Now here's the tricky bit: let's say the brewer picked up a 5-stack of strawberries and a 1-stack of pomegranates (in that order). In the current system, brewing these together would form a 30-stack of fruit punch - even though the reagents are defined in identical quantities, they function as absolute minimums, and proportions are ignored.
In the new version with [MAXREACTIONS:2], what happens? Do we get a 10-stack of fruit punch and 4 leftover strawberries; a 20-stack of fruit punch and 2 leftover strawberries; or a 20-stack of fruit punch, 1 leftover strawberry and 1 leftover pomegranate (because the strawberries were picked up first, so the game pulls from the strawberry pile until it hits the reaction cap)?
I don't even understand why two stacks were grabbed in the first place, so I have no idea. Was the "two fruit" one reagent def with an amount of two or two reagent defs with amounts of one? In any case, you all have played around with it a lot more than I have. In general, when it loops through the reagents, it checks what the potential multiplier is and goes with the minumum overall. The new behavior is to then cap that minimum by the new multiplier cap.
Are there plans for a "global justice" system, or rather something like supra-regional extradition agreements? That could involve a bandit visiting our Tavern being wanted by our parent civ and consequently being arrested and extradited with a liaison. (and could then the same happen to our adventurer?)
More generally, do you have any plans beyond "It would be nice to have" for the Justice and Diplomacy "arcs" to have intertwined features such as described above?
I'm thinking of extradition agreements, trade or common law unions, and prisoner exchange with enemy civs.
Oh, that reminds me:
Will nobles write special books that progress statesmanship/law like the other books do to their field? Specifically, will we see law compendiums, reforms, capitularies, etc?
We had a bit about bounty hunting and so on, and we'll be exploring ideas of jurisdiction and so forth with the initial law framework, but I'm not sure how it'll play out. I'm pretty sure some of our laws will end up written down with the first law framework release. The new abstract knowledge framework has a single node for philosophy of law, and these things will probably join up and slowly be expanded. I've read through a number of disparate ancient law codes in preparation so far, so hopefully I can do it justice.
Now that the release is a lot closer to done than the last time I asked, what are the additions to the raws for this update going to be? Like are there now tokens to influence what kind of dance or music styles civilizations develop, or whether they build libraries and what they like to put in those libraries?
I guess it's too late now. It's in the file changes.txt. I don't think it says in there, but entity values influence how the art forms develop.
How random do you think deities should be? For example, would a deity be able to have domain over contradicting spheres, such as Fire and Water or Sun and Caverns? I tried using randomization to generate mythological associations, and got unintuitive combinations like a Wind God that was associated with Slug Men and Brewing and a Trickery God that was depicted as a Sperm Whale Man and rode upon a Giant Desert Scorpion. There were strong opinions about whether or not that was okay. If/when gods and mythology are expanded upon to include such information, would they be completely random like that, or would there be some guidance in the algorithms to prevent certain combinations?
There's already guidance preventing contradictions, and I know some people disagree with that to varying degrees. There are some cases it could allow with a bit of explanation or exposition (as with Poseidon and horses, or whatever). If it's just completely random, it ends up being too messy most of the time, in my opinion. The new myth generator should eventually allow for events to guide strange associations, so that you could end up with something weird, but since there's a story behind it, it feels better. Sometimes, maybe random associations just form without a cause-effect relationship, and that would be fine in moderation, and perhaps lead to some serendipitous flavor and variety, but it can easily overwhelm.
Can adventurers request permanent residence at Player Fortresses while playing them in adventure mode? If so, what noble would the adventurer need to speak to?
Yeah, the mayor/expedition leader should work (or the monarch). It checks for law making and/or meet workers, responsibility-wise.
From how far away will visitors come? Will it be a case of no human neighbours=no human visitors or will travellers journey to the far ends of the planet in search of legendary Dwarfish mead and dingo roasts?
It lets them travel a long way right now (but not across water). I'm not sure how it'll end up over time.
What is the criteria for creatures coming to visit? Would gorlaks, troglodytes and trolls, or wandering overworld animal-folk be able to walk into your taverns and start partying or will they still operate as wild animals? Will wandering gorlaks/trogs/trolls/animal-folk be equipped with weapons or armor or skills from interacting with other civs? I haven't seen kobolds mentioned in the visitor examples, are they capable of visiting?
They need to arrive as a guest to fit in to the code. Wandering critters don't count. Gorlaks and animal people are still an odd case because it doesn't recognize the intelligent status of wilderness populations until they make a break and enter a civ. Kobolds are not capable of visiting. It doesn't change anything about wilderness populations equipment-wise or anything-else-wise -- there are breakaway segments that join as a city pop which is stored differently.
Are there any plans fiddling with SVN?
The wikipedia disambiguation gave support vector networks as the closest match, and I don't know what those are.
While this won't be an issue in Vanilla, what happens if you're playing a race that's not opposed to cannibalism, and you start serving the meat of sapients in your tavern? Will other races, particularly the ones whose kindred you've butchered, object to this state of affairs?
There's no food service right now, and we haven't handled that case in general.
Are adventurers experience any side effect caused by beer on this update?
Yeah, all of them (except it doesn't take control of you to model erratic behavior), though it can take a bit of time to kick in as in real life, so you have to be careful.
Can adult dwarfs play with their children?
Nope, they don't really play with each other yet either, except in performances.