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[PatrikLundell]

After all, illusionists are ... not even using magic.

What?! O.o No, the magic has to be real. I saw it...

Oh, I'm not talking about Uri Geller. He's not an illusionist but a Mentalist, and he actually uses magic and not trickery, 'case he says so.

@HenAi: Causing nuclear fusion would not end the fortress, because there's nothing to keep it going once the initial blast kills or knocks out the mage. There might be some local structural reengineering, though. This disregards the enormous amounts of energy having to be put in to create the fusion in the first place, as well as the incredible precision with which it has to be applied. Rather than a nuclear fusion, you'd get a laser cutter, with a plasma removing the floor tile. I could envision generation of the powers required for accidental nuclear fusion if 1000 top level mages where conducting an incredibly high level ritual, but again, to actually accidentally generate a small ITER level single fusion burst would require precision. A "conventional" huge fire ball would be possible, although the most probable result is just a fizzle.
I agree the power results of a failure generally should match the power of the attempted casting. I can think of two things throwing that off significantly, and the first one is "local" magic in the form of an elevated ambient magic level (unknown or misapplied by the mage), magic power supplying item (again, an uncontrolled surge, rather than a slow steady flow), or the like, and the other is when a mage attracts the attention of some powerful extra planar being that uses the miscast magic as a conduit for its own, considerably more powerful, magic to e.g. open a portal to step through, mind control the mage, etc.

[Urist Mc Dwarf]

Feel better toady!

[Urlance Woolsbane]

The GDC myth-generator video shows that randomized races are in the pipeline. Will users be able to influence the random elements, and if so, by how much?

What does the SUPERNATURAL tag do? The wiki claims that it gives a creature access to all secrets of a corresponding sphere, yet it doesn't seem to do that in 42.xx.

I have seen demons with the death sphere that  know like 24 versions of necromancy in the legends viewer in this version (you know SECRET_01, SECRET_02) what it calls the necromancer secrets, so it does work, at least for them.

I did a bit of testing, and it would seem that not only do spire-demons have some sort of monopoly on SUPERNATURAL (presumably by way of either the GENERATED or UNIQUE_DEMON tags,) but only the ones that rule goblins get its benefits. I tried adventuring as one (by way of some .exe hackery,) then retiring him, and he didn't have access to any secrets. What's more, it would seem that spire-demons can't actually use their knowledge. I made a rainbow-aligned secret that turns the learner into a horse, gave all spire-demons the RAINBOWS sphere, and none of them changed, despite knowing the secret. I even found one in person, just to see if world-gen was being finicky.

[Untrustedlife]

The GDC myth-generator video shows that randomized races are in the pipeline. Will users be able to influence the random elements, and if so, by how much?

What does the SUPERNATURAL tag do? The wiki claims that it gives a creature access to all secrets of a corresponding sphere, yet it doesn't seem to do that in 42.xx.

I have seen demons with the death sphere that  know like 24 versions of necromancy in the legends viewer in this version (you know SECRET_01, SECRET_02) what it calls the necromancer secrets, so it does work, at least for them.

I did a bit of testing, and it would seem that not only do spire-demons have some sort of monopoly on SUPERNATURAL (presumably by way of either the GENERATED or UNIQUE_DEMON tags,) but only the ones that rule goblins get its benefits. I tried adventuring as one (by way of some .exe hackery,) then retiring him, and he didn't have access to any secrets. What's more, it would seem that spire-demons can't actually use their knowledge. I made a rainbow-aligned secret that turns the learner into a horse, gave all spire-demons the RAINBOWS sphere, and none of them changed, despite knowing the secret. I even found one in person, just to see if world-gen was being finicky.

interesting!

Perhaps they have to have it at the beginning of world gen to have the secret?
Were they labeled as having access to it in legends viewer? (thats how I found that out with demons)

[Urlance Woolsbane]

The GDC myth-generator video shows that randomized races are in the pipeline. Will users be able to influence the random elements, and if so, by how much?

What does the SUPERNATURAL tag do? The wiki claims that it gives a creature access to all secrets of a corresponding sphere, yet it doesn't seem to do that in 42.xx.

I have seen demons with the death sphere that  know like 24 versions of necromancy in the legends viewer in this version (you know SECRET_01, SECRET_02) what it calls the necromancer secrets, so it does work, at least for them.

I did a bit of testing, and it would seem that not only do spire-demons have some sort of monopoly on SUPERNATURAL (presumably by way of either the GENERATED or UNIQUE_DEMON tags,) but only the ones that rule goblins get its benefits. I tried adventuring as one (by way of some .exe hackery,) then retiring him, and he didn't have access to any secrets. What's more, it would seem that spire-demons can't actually use their knowledge. I made a rainbow-aligned secret that turns the learner into a horse, gave all spire-demons the RAINBOWS sphere, and none of them changed, despite knowing the secret. I even found one in person, just to see if world-gen was being finicky.

interesting!

Perhaps they have to have it at the beginning of world gen to have the secret?
Were they labeled as having access to it in legends viewer? (thats how I found that out with demons)

They were in the .xml-dump, which is what I assume legends-viewer reads.

EDIT: Now that I think of it, the plump-helmet man-necromancy bug is pertinent. They can teach the secrets of life and death, but not use them. The knowledge components of secrets seem to exist independently of their effects.

[pikachu17]

are you still going to add haunted furniture,Stalkers and Grendel in the future, or have you decided against those creatures for some reason? And if and when you add animated furniture, does that mean that interactions will be able to affect items and transform creatures into items and vice versa?

[Untrustedlife]

are you still going to add haunted furniture,Stalkers and Grendel in the future, or have you decided against those creatures for some reason? And if and when you add animated furniture, does that mean that interactions will be able to affect items and transform creatures into items and vice versa?

Actusally if you watch the recent talk he did at gdc, one of the powers was "animate furniture".

Nah toady jumps around, the plans have essentially been the same over the last many releases, he has a huge list of like 2000 items he keeps track off, and he is only adding things from the list, though he did  say there is a very tiny amount of leeway in case he wants to add something fun though. Of course he also occasionally does community suggestions.

In fact there is s huge night creature hunter arc on the Dev page he hasn't really started working on yet.

(all version numbers toady does are based on percentages, right now the game is 42% done) It isnt arbitrary.

[pikachu17]

is Actusally a typo or actual cool-sounding word? and can you post the link to this gdc talk?

[Nahere]

Here:

gdc talk

[ZM5]

Here:

gdc talk

Hmm, seeing the "raws", so to speak, for the myth generator, I gotta ask - once it's added to the game, will modders need to add their own creatures and such to the file itself, or will sentient, civilized races be automatically pulled from the raws into the myths in-game without having to create any additional files?

[Putnam]

The raws you see there are hilariously preliminary, by the looks of it.

[Miuramir]

And once again, the example of what "wild magic" means comes down to "it has a 20% chance of killing everyone nearby."  Whenever I ask what "wild magic" means in terms of something that can actually be in a game, it always comes down to "it kills your dwarves if you use it". This isn't complex behavior, it's just a random game over if you're stupid enough to use the system.

Again, DF is fundamentally a game of managed risk. ...

Let me try and give a different sort of example.  Let's assume for the moment that future!DF has a sliding "chaosity of magic" parameter; and that it can reasonably be condensed into a simple parameter of small integers.  (Given the "fantasy level" parameter for the mythology generator shown in the GDC talk which works exactly like that, I think it's a decent starting point at least.)

Due to whatever combination of origin myths (which seem to frequently involve cosmic eggs, and commonly animal deities), let's say there is a spell that creates turkey eggs; as this is nominally for your breakfast omelette (Turkey Egg Stew: Expertly Diced Turkey Eggs x3), the simplest version creates 3.  (The costs, difficulty in researching or learning, etc. would be set elsewhere in the generator.)

Chaos 0: Spell creates 3 turkey eggs (3-3, avg. 3)
Chaos 1: Spell creates 1d3+1 turkey eggs (2-4, avg. 3)
Chaos 2: Spell creates 1d5 turkey eggs (1-5, avg. 3)
Chaos 3: Spell creates 1d6-1 turkey eggs, with the dice exploding on 6 (0 to infinite, or maxint at least; but still avg. 3)
Chaos 4: Spell creates 1d6-1 items, with the dice exploding on 6 (0 to infinite, or maxint at least; but still avg. 3); plus an additional d6 is rolled... 1: a random sort of egg; 2-5, turkey egg(s) as expected; 6: a random turkey product (varying the kind and the type at the two ends; a spell to create gold ingots might have a chance of random ingots, or random gold things)
Chaos 5: mostly as above, but the additional die is 1: random source or predecessor; 2: random egg; 3-4: turkey egg; 5: random turkey product; 6: random target or successor.  You might end up with a live turkey, a ready to eat 3x Turkey Egg Stew (omelette, more or less), or something along those lines.  The gold ingots spell might give gold ore, or gold figurines. 
Chaos 6: adds another die, which on a 6 gives a random modifier or state to the result so far... eggs might be fertile or rotten or boiling, nominally-live turkeys might be giant or starving or husked.  Gold ingots might arrive molten, or as masterwork studding on everything in the workshop. 

All of the above are based on fairly straightforward algorithmic modifications of the initial "predictable" result (3 turkey eggs), plus trawling around in pre-existing relationships in the raws.  No one would argue that even the Chaos 3 version *can* be a lot less predictable; but really you've got less than 0.5% chance of more than a dozen eggs, the *average* remains 3, and if some fort somewhere generates four dozen eggs from a single casting, that's amusing while also being one in a million. 

Even stepping up to Chaos 5... getting several live turkeys when you asked for 3 eggs is certainly a bit surprising, but in the general scheme of fort (or adventurer) life is more likely to cause an amusing anecdote than the fall of civilization. 

Only when you turn it all the way up to Chaos 6 does there become any real potential for disaster, and the odds are very low.  Even most of the weird results are annoying and/or humorous; ending up with 11 rotting Turkey Egg Stew in your magic workshop, with attendant miasma until cleaned up, is unlikely to end any reasonably prepared fortress.  There's a tiny chance of ending up with a few angry zombie turkeys, or were-turkeys; this could cause a moderate amount of damage to a good fort or end a teetering one, but the chances for this sort of ending are down there with "embarked someplace with undead eagles and rain that stuns the living".  And remember that this is a *voluntary* parameter turned (in this example) up as far as it could go. 

While the example is a bit contrived, hopefully it helps explain how a simple spell "creates about 3 turkey eggs" can become gradually more chaotic, via entirely procedural means that can readily be programmed within the existing structures. 

[NW_Kohaku]

stuff

Alright, this conversation is really turning into too much of a derail, so I'll just post my answer in the existing magic thread. (Good thing too, because that was a pretty long response, and I'm sure I'd get a ton of TL;DR whining about it...)

If anyone else wants to chime in, please do so there.

[TheFlame52]

Why don't elves have fairs?

Taverns are two-story. Towers and keeps are multi-story. Will other buildings like houses or shops be multi-story in the future?

Is there a comprehensive list of divine materials in the game, but only some of them actually get generated? I've noticed that a few metals/fabrics are always the same combination of descriptor and sphere. Examples: sonorous lines/music, twisting metal/chaos.

[therahedwig]

How do you plan on dealing with introducing a variety of magical abilities as the development progresses? I mean, I imagine you wouldn't be able to make one big fancy magic release with all the types of magic possible, as probably a lot of these things need to be programmed in and have a modicum of balancing, on the other hand, I can imagine that you might want to keep people on their toes when it comes to new features in magic. Is it going to be handled like hidden fun stuff? Or are you going to nicely put into the release notes 'transfiguration into aquatic animals is now possible'?