Print

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

[Max™]

Ah yes, I look forward to being able to ask where the nearest tavern/temple/etc is in a town. Though they do point you to a tavern if you ask to stay the night usually. Nice touch on them waking up and asking if you need something when you try to just crash somewhere without asking!

I don't know why I didn't think about the following groups as being patrol related, I think because they don't give the "I'm walking my patrol" response. Still a neat sort of touch either way.

I'll go put up a bug report about the filling thing, guess I just lumped it in with the "can't eat intelligent creatures or sleep in the mountains or cut trees with stone axes" stuff in my head rather than a unique issue, though the mountains were fixed.

The deity impersonation works great btw, I gave that tag to dragons after making them intelligent, and the more effective dragonfire is amazing. I've never seen statues explode or people running around with exploding coinpurses (outside of using dfhack to set their coins on fire) and it is awesome in a horrific sort of fashion.

I was kind of torn about the 1 hour=1 log stuff with adventurer sites when you first mentioned it, but it's such a handy way to pass time now!

[Random_Dragon]

Interesting answers as always.

Because it looked like a table leg and not a figurine.  Not that the skills make any sense overall.  I don't know the situation with skill vs quality.

We were thinking of experimenting with item components with the stone axe, but it didn't end up happening, and things were going to migrate over to the tool framework.

Regarding the skill, I guess I can understand it. There is no real internal consistency yet that dictates that adventurer-made items with no workshop use a given skill. It only really seems logical to me because that's the logic I've used for skills in modding, just force of habit essentially.

Reactions that don't have a skill assigned to them can never produce products with quality. See issue: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=9769 ArmokGoB made the suggestion that you use the same logic as dwarves making rock stone swords, and give it the stonecrafting skill.

I don't have a specific time in mind.

Again, because a partial fix is trivial, I'm requoting my remark earlier:

Plus again, giant desert scorpions. Yes, adding normal and animal-people versions would be more work, as would reworking the giant desert scorpion to be a creature variant of normal ones. But in the meantime, why the hell can't they just be added back in and reworked LATER? :V

[Witty]

I don't have a specific time in mind.

Again, because a partial fix is trivial, I'm requoting my remark earlier:

Plus again, giant desert scorpions. Yes, adding normal and animal-people versions would be more work, as would reworking the giant desert scorpion to be a creature variant of normal ones. But in the meantime, why the hell can't they just be added back in and reworked LATER? :V

You do realize you can just copy the raws from an older version and paste them into any creature text file and they'll work fine, right? They're even on the wiki, here.

I can't speak for Toady, but I imagine this issue falls in the line with the other hundred trivial fixes. The real question is what makes this one more important than the others? Kobolds have been trivially broken for a while now. Why shouldn't that issue have priority over this one?

And if it's a trivial issue - it's a trivial fix for both the user and Toady. If the user can easily fix a bug, does it really need to be even thought about when there are other far more pressing bugs plaguing the latest version that the user cannot fix at all?

[Random_Dragon]

Again, I've fixed that myself. But if it's trivial to fix, that makes it irritating that two or so minutes can't be set aside to fix it in the vanilla game proper. The very fact that it's so bloody quick and easy to fix means that while it takes me only a minute each version to fix it when I get an update, it also means that it would take Toady a minute to fix it for good.

[vjmdhzgr]

Interesting answers as always.

Because it looked like a table leg and not a figurine.  Not that the skills make any sense overall.  I don't know the situation with skill vs quality.

We were thinking of experimenting with item components with the stone axe, but it didn't end up happening, and things were going to migrate over to the tool framework.

Regarding the skill, I guess I can understand it. There is no real internal consistency yet that dictates that adventurer-made items with no workshop use a given skill. It only really seems logical to me because that's the logic I've used for skills in modding, just force of habit essentially.

Reactions that don't have a skill assigned to them can never produce products with quality. See issue: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=9769 ArmokGoB made the suggestion that you use the same logic as dwarves making rock stone swords, and give it the stonecrafting skill.

I don't have a specific time in mind.

Again, because a partial fix is trivial, I'm requoting my remark earlier:

Plus again, giant desert scorpions. Yes, adding normal and animal-people versions would be more work, as would reworking the giant desert scorpion to be a creature variant of normal ones. But in the meantime, why the hell can't they just be added back in and reworked LATER? :V

I think it's best to just keep the haft as using the carpentry skill, until other reactions are introduced that use woodcrafting. I feel like it would just be a bit of an annoyance to have a skill exclusively for the creation of wooden hafts.

[Random_Dragon]

I think it's best to just keep the haft as using the carpentry skill, until other reactions are introduced that use woodcrafting. I feel like it would just be a bit of an annoyance to have a skill exclusively for the creation of wooden hafts.

Which gives me a dozen or more reasons to change it in Adventurecraft, at least. XP

[Chaoseed]

From India, I read the Ramayana and the Mahabharata (or much shorter novelized versions of them that still amounted to ~2500 pages) in preparation for the myth stuff.  With the lists of named, graded, mostly-combat spells obtained from godlike beings, people ascending to godlike status, lots of physical demon-type creatures being fought by heroes in battles of various sizes, and more, those myths are more aligned with older pnp and computer RPGs than the traditional Greek/Christian/etc. stories are (I'm not sure where the inspirations go through those and 20th century novelists and then through DND to computer games and all that, and how much is a coincidence -- I assume this is a discussion had many times).

That's really interesting, actually. I don't know if anyone has had that discussion...

Toady have you ever read discworld?

I think I read one of the books many years ago.  Something Egyptish.

That would probably be Pyramids!

[TheBiggerFish]

I was ninja'd by Chaoseed, but in case you were wondering I think the Discworld book you said you read was Pyramids.

Have you considered reading more Discworld books?

[Gashcozokon]

Thank you for the responses Toady.

Do you think that, similar to graphical tilesets, there will be a list/file which will allow assignment of specific character codes to units by profession and/or the rest of the item set?

[Bumber]

You skipped over my question about goblin drinking/eating.
That isn't at all convincing. I require a substantive reply. Etc.

Does your stance on goblin [NO_EAT][NO_DRINK] remain a permanent lore decision, and not a practical one?
Edit: To clarify the above: I want to know if you've decided that vanilla DF goblins are a race which must inherently not need to eat, or whether any alternative that ends in the same aesthetic is still on the table.
Keeping in mind that goblins ethics hold cannibalism to be a personal issue, and pillaging settlements is very war-like, I would think it could be pulled off without resorting to meat herding.

They could also be granted the tags later by magic, if their demon overlord were so inclined.

Just food for thought. Now that goblins are living in our forts, I felt it merited reconsideration.

[conflictensues]

Again, I've fixed that myself. But if it's trivial to fix, that makes it irritating that two or so minutes can't be set aside to fix it in the vanilla game proper. The very fact that it's so bloody quick and easy to fix means that while it takes me only a minute each version to fix it when I get an update, it also means that it would take Toady a minute to fix it for good.

There is also something to be said for non-tech-savvy people as well as for the sheer number of people.  That aside, I kind of get how fixing trivial bugs is annoying since after doing so and making a major update it essentially puts the whole thing back on square one.  That aside, don't the modders usually have a lot of bug fixes in dfhack (forgive me if I'm wrong; it's been long since I've used it)?  It seems like if DF is on github trivial fixes could be made and subsequent merge requests added by players.  If it isn't and it's private that's another issue, although I'd point out Space Engineers is proprietary and open source which, to my knowledge, is working for them.

In the end it isn't something that is 'that simple,' so whatever the status quo or decisions moving forward won't receive any dissent from me.  I just wanted to throw in my two cents.  ^.^

[Dirst]

Speaking of non-tech-saavy, a pull request is beyond most player's capabilities.

DFHack is generally for tweaks and fixes that can't be done through raw modding, and Starter Packs will usually come preconfigured with the stable fixes on by default.  Raw fixes tend to accumulate in the Modest Mod.  No pressure, Button

[Urlance Woolsbane]

As always, thanks Toady!
Apologies if I've asked this before, but is there a chance of you ever devoting a release to polishing off the raws? I appreciate the practicality of the case-by-case strategy you use for adding tags, but it does tend to result in some frustratingly rigid parameters.

[Miuramir]

You skipped over my question about goblin drinking/eating.

Quite possibly because it's far from new; and generally, the people who seem to bring it up don't seem to have a good argument.  As one tiny example, here's some of the explanation I went into when we went over this in 2014 and in 2015

There are four more-or-less solid and one fuzzy arguments in favor of the current situation (goblins that only die due to damage, basically) that have been mentioned several times; to summarize heavily:

* Having a race that only dies by violence (no starvation, no old age) gives the possibility of fascinatingly different societies not possible in our universe, and extends the viability of some that are technically possible but unlikely and/or unstable.  This both provides variety, and opens up the "state space" that DF can generate stories in. 

* Having a "bad guy" race that is capable of thriving in dark wastelands, blasted areas, and so on is thematically useful; many fantasy genres have these sorts of situations.  (In many cases, they simply ignore the logistics of it, but DF forces you to be explicit about such things.) 

* Having a "bad guy" race that is not limited by traditional logistics is useful from a gameplay perspective, in that it allows a wider variety of strategic interactions.  Sieges on glaciers, armies marching under the glare of hostile volcanoes, dark fortresses that hold out even against millennia of encirclement, and seemingly endless waves of foes in situations where the defenders are barely able to hold on; all of these are increased options for fun *in addition* to the sorts of fun one can have against realistic human and mostly-realistic humanoid foes. 

* Eventually, the procedural generation of species, worlds, civilizations, mythologies, etc. will throw out some seriously weird and nifty results.  Having the "canned" races that we poke around with in the early days of alpha testing (ie, now) include some unusual combinations with strong strategic and grand-strategic implications increases the chances that the underlying engine being developed will be able to handle even more exotic situations down the road, when we might end up with Fantasia-like seasonally-empowered faeries going to war against mushroom men from the depths, or whatever. 

* More philosophically, they are that way because that's the way they are in the "default" setting... the authors (Toady and Threetoe) have created their personal variations of various fantasy classic races and settings, and those traits (such as cannibalistic elves, plentiful magma held in by impossible materials, and goblins not dependent on a baggage train) are part of what you get.  The default, existing, "traditional" setting for DF is a fair ways up the level-of-fantasy / level-of-magic scale; people tend to underestimate that because the majority of the worked-out parts they come into regular contact with in the current early-alpha state tend to be semi-realistic. 

The arguments against the current situation never seem to be very solid; the best I've heard are roughly as follows:

* It's not realistic.  Admittedly, it isn't... but the counter here is that DF isn't realistic by default in a zillion other places, and why should this be different?  If you're trying to generate a wide spectrum of fantasy worlds, having societies mostly limited to the sorts of things we have exhibited, or even *conceived of*, as humans seems to be terribly limiting. 

* Changing goblins to be a lot more boring doesn't actively break the game most of the time.  OK; there are a lot of changes you can make to DF that reduce the variety and wonder of the worlds and situations that it can create, that don't break it (much).  This is one of them; that doesn't mean it's a good idea in the general case. 

Looking ahead, DF will have one or more likely several "dials" that allow adjustment of how "fantastic" the setting is.  People arguing against the current standard goblins seem to largely want those settings fairly low; there's nothing wrong with that, but "mostly realistic" universes are a tiny subset of the interesting universes that DF can, and particularly will be able to, create.  If you personally don't like them, in the future you will be able to easily adjust the "fantasy" level; for now, a few trivial text file adjustments or using a mod will get them out of your way.  But it's important for the future scope of DF for the stock setting today to cover some weird stuff, so that the engine we're gradually helping test is robust against the greater weirdness of the future. 

[Random_Dragon]

The arguments against the current situation never seem to be very solid; the best I've heard are roughly as follows:

Consistency with literally every other adventure-playable race, especially now that we have playable goblins, isn't a solid argument as well? It's not merely unrealistic, it's unrealistic while rendering a major part of adventure-mode survival irrelevant, when it COULD be a decent challenge to be carnivorous and able to starve. Keep in mind just how important food and water is in adventure mode.

You also seem to have decided that "gameplay reason came first, and the original reason is no longer needed" is apparently not a factor.