Print

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

[Shonai_Dweller]

Assuming the bugs come under control,
are you planning on adding any more to the xml output during this set of releases? Artifact descriptions and instruments would be great.

[Knight Otu]

What are the major limiting factors of world gen STRANGE MOODS artifacts? In the process of updating my mods, I moved the token from one race that basically spammed artifacts to one that apparently is uninterested in creating artifacts.

[Shonai_Dweller]

What are the major limiting factors of world gen STRANGE MOODS artifacts? In the process of updating my mods, I moved the token from one race that basically spammed artifacts to one that apparently is uninterested in creating artifacts.

Interesting, was about to start playing with that myself. It seems not to be entity related anyhow. Dwarves are happy to mood in goblin pits and tribal villages with limited access to materials (except bones of course).

[MetroChensual]

1. There's general "harass the population of a civ" raid and "acquire artifact" raid. Will you be implementing raids that try to take over a settlement by killing and otherwise incapacitating the defenders and claim the settlement for the raider's civ?

2. Because of the whole religion and artifacts things and tombs being a thing, will there gonna be an expansion of the tomb structures where dead civ members or at least historical figures get buried if anyone finds their bodies? And will the important figures be able to be buried with artifacts?

3. If there are some methods of bringing back dead people eventually, will civs have differing opinions about resurrection?
For example, one civ might forbid acts of resurrection while the other not only allow them but encourage them

Sorry, everyone! I'm kinda new to this forum and i've made this account just to ask these questions. Also English is not my first language so sorry for any mistakes.

[deathpunch578]

Sorry, everyone! I'm kinda new to this forum and i've made this account just to ask these questions. Also English is not my first language so sorry for any mistakes.

your English is perfectly fine

[PatrikLundell]

1. There's general "harass the population of a civ" raid and "acquire artifact" raid. Will you be implementing raids that try to take over a settlement by killing and otherwise incapacitating the defenders and claim the settlement for the raider's civ?

2. Because of the whole religion and artifacts things and tombs being a thing, will there gonna be an expansion of the tomb structures where dead civ members or at least historical figures get buried if anyone finds their bodies? And will the important figures be able to be buried with artifacts?

3. If there are some methods of bringing back dead people eventually, will civs have differing opinions about resurrection?
For example, one civ might forbid acts of resurrection while the other not only allow them but encourage them

Sorry, everyone! I'm kinda new to this forum and i've made this account just to ask these questions. Also English is not my first language so sorry for any mistakes.

1. The raid feature is new and will be expanded to at least steal non artifact items later on. Conquest is probably a lot further on and would probably require/be part of the military arc (which is beyond the planned DF horizon).

2. -
3. Probably. Resurrection will probably require magic (which is the next arc, and probably one or two more after that). Whether it will make it in there is probably unknown even by Toady at this stage.

[MachinaMandala]

It's currently possible to resurrect people anyway using interactions.

[deathpunch578]

I imagine it wouldn't be too hard to have them come back alive (not zombified) since df hack can do this

[Putnam]

You can bring people back alive (not zombified) with interactions using RESURRECT instead of ANIMATE.

[Toady One]

(Part 1 of 2)

Thanks to KittyTac, Fleeting Frames, Shonai_Dweller, Knight Otu, FantasticDorf, ZM5, PatrikLundell, PlumpHelmetMan, Randon_Dragon, *Another* (don't mean to downgrade, but don't have the masterpiece char handy), MachinaMandala, Putnam, and anybody I missed for helping to answer questions this time!  For nearly every name in this list, there's at least one question that didn't appear below, so please go back and check just after your question if you don't find it!

Regarding a new thread, we're thinking of doing that whenever the dev page next gets reworked.  It's quite possible this'll happen before we embark on the first magic release, once we have a much clearer idea of which path forward we're going to take.  For now, we're just going to do bugs and incremental improvements for some months.

On the new release and future schedule of small releases, part of releasing on Thanksgiving is having relatives around and other stuff going on, so aside from doing Linux and fixing that world gen crash, I haven't had a lot of time to settle in, and there's a chunky Montreal talk coming up in the first half of December as well that I'm still composing.  So I expect we'll have a slow start to the bug-fixing and improvements, but it should ramp up more after a few weeks.

With the myths and magic release, we can expect magic and fantasy sliders for world generation, but what whimsy? It occurs to me that lollipop forests and, dare I say it, featherwood trees, aren't so much fantastical or magical as whimsical. I imagine some people would be keen to play in an Adventure Time-like world but a max magic max fantasy setting would more likely generate something D&D-like than that. Can we expect any other sliders, like world geometry, real-world cultural influence, climate, that sort of thing?

Will there be advanced worldgen options for the myth generator? Say, if I need explosion spells AND water evaporating spells in a world?

There was also a tone-type slider I had mentioned, from completely non-violent worlds to horrifying ones, and I've also mentioned that there'll probably be quite a few more (and the originals'll be broken into several) as we get a feel for what sort of customization we can do.  Your example also fits in a bit to what we've mentioned in terms of "sphere-related regions", which would replace the "good/evil" regions we have now, and give us a lot more control assuming we can take advantage of all the associations that come up.  Either during this or because of this kind of thing, we'll develop some ability to set specific tone variables more carefully, and something like a "whimsical" attribute or similar would become possible.

We've been working through different geometric options for the last while, trying to figure out what's feasible; I have no idea if the concept of a slider works here, or if you'll just have shapes to select -- of course, the default will just be to randomly go with something.

Magic-wise, even the simple myth generator prototype had options by-sphere to customize the world, so I imagine you'll have quite a few options in the first version, and more after that as needs arise.

does identity tracking reflect transformations, say if you attacked a hamlet transformed into a goblin, would it store the physical description of that goblin-form and any names you used, or would npcs be able to associate that goblin with you, naturally being a human, after you had transformed back out-of-sight?

Ah, no, this is one of those things I mentioned in the EXAG talk; no physical description information is saved, aside from the history figure id.  So there's nothing good there yet.  We want to tackle transformation at the same time as identifying features (scars, etc), general appearance vars and cloaks.  It's tricky if this information can be passed around, since it is potentially more bulky than passing around identities or names, but we should be able to do something with it.

With all the wealth of procedurally generated content and simulations that make it all work together in meaningful ways, do you foresee various aspects of Dwarf Fortress becoming interesting enough to be a (mini-)game in itself?

Examples:
For the economic aspect, a fantasy trading game where the player can go from town to town, buy cheap and sell high, buy wagons or ships to move more stuff, eventually create a trading empire that has to deal with world politics rather than bandits.

For the combat aspect, a martial arts game where the player can learn various moves and techniques, fight other warriors who might use different schools, seek out masters to learn new ways to fight.

Similarly for all sort of magic/art/cooking/crafting, do you foresee these becoming interesting enough at some point that a player might simply spend hours exploring the possibilities? Wandering the game world following leads and rumors to find new masters or schools to learn from or challenge, perhaps even have deities teach them some seriously awesome stuff.

...

What I consider a minigame here are all the little rules and relationships that might exist in a system that would, in a cooking system, take some ingredients then process and combine them in some way that lets the player tap into all the procedurally generated goodness.

Some of the things you've described are listed as roles on the dev page, when it comes to adventure mode.  Being a trader for instance, or an explorer, or a thief, etc.  The idea is not only to produce these types of embedded games, but for them to work together, so you can switch and blend them as you please, perhaps leveraging your exploration in industry, or your thievery in trade, etc.  We had a goal with the thief in Tales Foretold that you wouldn't ever have to leave the city you started in if you didn't want to (and didn't get exiled at trial), and though that game wasn't finished, we made it far enough that we have a feel for getting it done.  As city districts and the justice system and the economy and sub-groups like criminal gangs and guilds become more interesting, this can be imagined for DF.

It's hard to say how independently engaging more narrowly focused elements will be.  It depends on the design and the time we spend on it.  Cooking is clearly complicated enough in real life that you can spend all your time on it, and what you move over to a game can also be complicated and engaging, but this also involves a lot of details we'd have to program.  Hopefully it'll all just get slowly better.

Will magical artificial landmarks appear on the map during worldgen, e.g region-wide explosions showing up as ASCII craters?

Yeah, the idea is to have everything large enough reflected there properly, no matter what it is.

I heard there will be transformation and polymorph sort of stuff

1: Will there be new skills to accommodate unique abilities associated with transformations? Like, if I gain the magical ability to turn into a poison-spitting snake, will I be able to, with practice, become a Spitmaster or something? Can I become a master flier if I turn into a bird and practice for a long time?

Will there be different methods of transforming, with different results? Examples:

    Can I turn into an anthropomorphic wolf, with some of my usual appearance traits and can be recognized as me but also a tail, and scent powers, and a bite attack-- Wolfman style. Or:
    Can I turn into a wolf, but I retain the ability to speak, and no one can tell me from a normal wolf unless I say something. Or:
    Can I turn someone into a newt, leaving them no less intelligent, but unable to do things newts physically can't do, like talk and use magic that doesn't involve speaking or movements newts can't do? Or:
    Can I turn them into a newt, with all the physical and mental repercussions thereof, leaving them helpless unless someone changes them back?

We had locomotion skills in Armok I think, and I've threatened them for DF.  It would be funny if you had to learn how to fly, but it would also be a much less effective spell.  It's quite possible there'll be additional parameters for transformations; it makes sense to have them.  The default is just how it works now, where you keep your soul but don't get to speak etc. if the host creature can't do it.  I'm not sure how fast it'll proceed, as there are a lot of effects to work on.

is there any chance that different regions might eventually have more unique and distinct assemblages of flora and fauna (perhaps to come somewhere around the time randomly-generated wildlife is implemented)? It gets a bit repetitive and immersion-breaking to see camels in every desert and grizzly bears in every temperate forest, regardless of whether or not they're at opposite ends of the world.

Fleeting Frames mentioned that this already happens to some extent.  There are tags that control the frequency that an animal is chosen, and it assigns them a range throughout the world.  More creature types would help (though we already have a lot), and random creatures would also help.  It's a big ask without procedural creatures though, as the real world has a gazillion species, which is why it can manage to make a world so diverse.

I can't recall if this has been asked, but what about weapon racks and armor stands? These would be perfectly logical choices as display furniture, and I've kinda joked about the possibility that you might completely forget to utilize them for display.

I've stayed away from them as they are in a nebulous state, if I recollect.  They do make sense as future display furniture.

Can we expect to see underwater sites similar to those of dwarves, goblins etc.? I'm thinking something like coral castles of mermaids.

I remember reading somewhere (in one of the Threetoe stories?) about goblins serving demons in the Circus. Will there one day be demon sites in Hell, along with goblin populations and hell beasts? Perhaps even armed and armored demon leaders?

Speaking of demons, will demons be able to use magic related to their spheres? I find it odd how demons can grant necromancy slabs but cannot use the magic themselves.

We have a lot of notes and even v1.00.00 (or v1.00.01 I guess?) Points associated to underwater sites.  'Expect' is always a strong word, since one shouldn't anticipate anything in the near-term, but it's there.

FantasticDorf mentioned the demon sites we had.  The myth release throws a wrench into this a bit, since the nature of it may change, but there'll be more stuff, in any case.

The myth generator gives demon types with magic use, so I'd expect that as well.

I’ve been looking into all sorts of tokens, and will there be new tokens to define if something needs magic? Such as a wizard acquiring his power or you being blessed by a goddess, etc.

Also, what about being blessed by gods/goddesses? Maybe through praying or through faithful support, they give you powers to defend his/her name?

There are some sourcing tokens for interactions already that we use (for necromancy, say), and I suspect we'll be using an amplified format there, along with whatever needs to be brought in to customize the myth generator and all associated objects there.  Godly stuff seems reasonable enough in certain settings.  No idea what we'll get to at first.

Will megabeast/titan/demon/historical figure body parts affect artifacts at all, either in the artifact release or magic? There are plenty of legends of stuff "made from the terrible ___'s bones", such as the Celtic Gáe Bulg made from the Coinchenn. Currently, generated creature materials have 0 value, and it'd be nice if turning our greatest foes into cool stuff had more oomph.

For example, the [MAGICAL] tag being present on a creature might confer some kind of effect, or a relevant [SPHERE] tag might be inherited by the artifact itself. But at the very least, could generated creatures have materials with value? Even though stuff like swamp titan silk is less valuable than pig tail cloth, it feels extra-special considering the source.

FantasticDorf mentioned the relics.  There are also fell moods, which produce artifacts from historical figures, both in your fort and in world gen with the latest major version.  I imagine this'll continue to be amplified, possibly with the same kind of magical tagging that would go into potion-making and all that.

The value stuff all sounds like oversights on my part.

1. Will body altering corruptions and transform causing curses eventually destroy weak clothes when occurring? For example a were beast's clothes being in tatters from the transformation.
2. Eventually will transforming or having body altering corruptions while wearing hard armor such as metal armor cause damage to the person transforming or being corrupted as they are possibly being restricted in their growth by the armor.
3. In terms of conduct required for afterlives how will our adventurers be able to check where they stand spiritually? Might praying or something similar be a possible way to check how the gods or whatever is in charge of the afterlife feels about you?
4. Eventually will events that currently only happen during world gen like festivals, buildings being built and ceremonies happen post world gen? If so could a player adventure attend the festival, ceremony or seeing the construction of the building?
5. When the first pass of the myth and magic update comes out what sort of magic organizations do you expect to see?
6. Will the player eventually be able to start magic organizations? If so could they try to build a magic academy and be the arch wizard of it?

1. Makes sense.
2. Makes sense.
3. Ha ha, perhaps!  Different places do it different ways, and some religions say this isn't possible as well.  As conduct comes to matter more, I imagine we'll entertain some options.
4. Yeah, we're planning on getting the two modes closer to parity, and we want the player to be able to participate in festivals etc. in both modes.  It would be fun to declare and design a festival yourself to commemorate some important happening in the fort, though we'd have to grapple with the durations a bit.  Perhaps all fort festivals would be more seasonal, etc., or at least like six-to-eight week fairs.
5. First pass?  No idea.  Of course, we hope to have some, but it's hard to say.
6. Eventually, sure, as you can create your little take-over entities now, and we're planning on making that better.  At some point, you'll be able to control more parameters.  I have no idea about the actual teaching of classes though; I'm not sure that'll ever be added at a high enough resolution to be a non-abstract process (there's the current dwarf skill demos, but they don't actually talk or anything.)

Will there be any exceptions to non-building destroyers finding ways around simple destructable obstacles blocking the way to steal artifacts(like wall grates without a door to lockpick to gain entry to a viewing area) or will it have to remain for later arcs when more tools & methods like invaders digging into your fortress are available?

With a sort of worry that by just walling off a precious artifact behind grates/metal bars, the AI may just get confused and like a flytrap get stuck lagging potentially into it with the intention to steal or completely divert away interest making a object basically un-stealable if its not particularly demanded by anybody or required to move off its display.

I don't have near-term plans for it, but if some problem comes up it'll achieve a higher status.

Will the myth arc also define gods and other supernatural beings on a world per world basis like magic? That is, what makes a god a god.

I.e. in the case of gods, would we procedurally generate what are their origin, what are their powers, what are their sources of powers, what if at all makes a being able to become a god or stop being a god. And what can, if at all, kill or destroy a god.

As you saw in the myth generator, we're already doing some of this (there were several gods, all generated per universe, some primordial and some created, with powers based partially on their source if they have one).  This also applies to "gods" that are more like nature spirits, which it generated and provided with powers and little physical descriptions.  It hasn't gone into destruction of gods or some other rules surrounding them, but I imagine that'll come up automatically if they get physical manifestations.  But yeah, this is already in progress and the first myth/magic release will have some of it.  The soul conduct rules can currently mention ascension, but I manage this will become a more interesting and diverse set of state changes.

Is the relationship between the word symbols and things like the names of gods or monsters going to be softcoded as part of the myths/magic release?  At present the word-symbols are a weird hybrid of hardcoded and softcoded, though can be directly edited but they MUST be there exactly as named in vanilla since they used to name things in a hardcoded manner which cannot make use of any new word-symbols that are added in.

Also, would it be possible to actually add in tokens for symbols themselves? By this I mean adding in the symbols such as is used to randomly generate gods, not the word-symbol tokens.

I'm not sure when it's going to change, since there are some other concerns at play about how languages are going to work or be generated in general later on that need to be respected.  So myths/magic might not see symbols altered much, though we're certainly going to be playing with spheres a lot, so it's hard to say.

The spheres are different.  I understand the notion of a custom sphere, and it makes sense to have either generated or raw-defined conceptual categories with various properties that you can apply, but the default spheres are actual concepts, that for a variety of reasons need to maintain their hard-coded meaning.  That just doesn't need to remain strictly linked to whatever is listed for a god and determines the raw symbols linked to its name.  As long as there is a strict identification between spheres and godly domains, it won't be possible to do modding there, but that could change.

Toady has mentioned i think either in his talk or his fortress replies that unique generated skills (which might go the way of instruments to being ambigious until seen in action, really up to toady how to address) as well as complimentary normal labour skills play a part for making & using objects, leveling your "Ümazu" magic skill for example individual to the culture & magic rules laid out in mythgen with applicable persons & races as well as drawbacks & consequences.

Books, wands and potions can all reasonably draw upon book-binder, woodcrafting & alchemy/brewing etc where appropriate. Still a good question, similar to how untrained crossbow dwarves bludgeon people with their weapons, you probably dont want somebody with no wand-casting skill attempting to stab someone with a blunt wooden 'knife' or misc object.

Just to clarify, if there is going to be randomly generated names for magic skills (just casting out if i got anything wrong or ideas have been changed on it during development), will the ability to mod in pre-fixed magical abilities remain hardcoded, so that the magic skill names are only generated, but doesn't affect the skill itself?

Any fire magic = "skolderer" skill in dwarvish tongue and stats, but fire imps drawing on exactly the same hardcoded fire magic skill (by being given natural levels similar to climbing & swimming) are seen to also have levels in "Adept/Exeptional Skolderer" for example or another name for fire magic between generated worlds where they are present.

I'm not sure if it'll work that way for natural magical abilities, but it might; some of the "learned like breathing" generated skills would be in the imp category, and might also be learned by others if the generator crosses them over.  But there are some missing tag notions here, which may or may not be the way it ends up going.  For the imp, this implies that it has some tag along the lines of "give me some generated fire stuff", rather than a specific interaction natural ability (which is independent of magical forces as it stands).  If the strictly raw defined natural ability is to be integrated into the magic system, it'll need some tag-hint for the generator to pick up on, in which case your scenario is more likely.  Whether that happens'll kind of depend on the needs of modders, etc.

[Toady One]

(Part 2 of 2)

To what degree do you think other "planes" could manifest as co-incidental soil/sky layers in the planar portal development context? For instance, will the clown car be changed from a geological layer into discrete portals buried at the bottom of the world? Or will they sort of coexist in an unrelated manner?

"Plane" to me suggests a different place, but the interfaces might be shaped or work in such a way that it looks like a layer, the way it is now.  Though if there isn't something special about that (like it being adamantine portals through magma), then it's just a neat cavern, which is also fine.  The planar/magical landform rewrite code is likely going to lead to a change to how caverns work as well; might as well clean up all the quibbles there if the underlying structures are going to be roasted.

I'd like to try some other neat planar interfaces though.  Fully parallel ones, places like woodlines where it can transfer a critter to an on-the-fly integrated landscape that can merge with fixed other-planar sites, "interior" planes that are generated when you travel into a soul, that sort
of thing.  All of these work in fort mode as well, even if it ends up being a little odd (have a tab you can switch to where you can see your squad of dwarves that are mining a demon's interior soul plane or something bizarre like that.)

A question regarding the fix for tree-dwarves that was announced; will this apply to flier pathfinding as well? Would make modded flier civs actually playable, as well as preventing flying animal people visitors from being stuck in mid-air.

I haven't tried it, but some of it is using acrobatic pathfinding floods when your idle code fails, and technically that should get a flier to the ground, but that only applies to your civ members.  It doesn't fix broader issues with flying civs.

Will the (justly or not) suspected artifact thieves have a way of clearing their name? Or is the suspicion something they'll just have to deal with on their job?

I'm not sure what this is referring to.  If there's a rumor of somebody taking an artifact, it is true, the way the game works now.

Regarding traveling military peoples; when the economy is implemented, would I be able to request mercenaries from other civilizations?  Like requesting archers from the elves to bolster my crossbowdorfs and then paying for it through the normal trade caravan or some other means.  Conversely, could your parent civilization levy your soldiers to help in other wars or to defend other forts?

I'm not sure what the particulars are going to be here so far in the future, and we don't have an economy now, but all the same we're hoping to get to a few things along these lines perhaps before we move on to the magic release, as we improve the new civ screen.  We should have more to say about it in a bit, once things settle.

Will we see the return of the alchemist and their soap making antics?

Ha, I feel like I'm missing a joke, since we have soap makers that replaced the alchemist...  but there's the matter of all the chemistry that comes from scholars that isn't used.  We want to add that sometime, oil of vitriol and spirit of nitre and all that.  Then there's the whole supernatural side of it, magical elixirs and such.  We should see a bit of that with magic.

1. Will other planes of existence have sites in them? Last FotF reply you said a group of wizards could possibly take over a plane of existence.
2. If other planes of existence have sites on them might settlements and wars on those planes be possible?
3. Will cross planar war be possible?
4. Will it be possible for gods or god like entities to set up sites in their home planes such as holy kingdoms.
5. Will it be possible in some worlds to have a god or godlike entity that goes to the normal plane and rules as a god king/queen/non gender specific ruler.

PlumpHelmetMan said yes to all, though maybe not in the initial release...  and I think that's quite correct.  Number 5 is a little more specific, but not unlike what the demons already do with their spires.  The first four mostly depend on the idea that a plane is just treated like another world map (though it might have weird properties).  You can stick sites in it, armies, drop artifacts, possibly find animals, dig, etc., and have it be saved -- travel between depends on portals or whatever else.  That should all be free, once I do the rather huge task of making two or more worlds possible in the first place.

What exactly does the CE_ERRATIC_BEHAVIOR token do? I thought it made dwarves start fights at random occasionally when drunk but I'm not sure if thats attributed to the token itself or due to arguments that happen in fort mode that the player just doesnt see.

People that like to brawl have a chance of starting a brawl-level fight with any nearby adult.  We might do more with it later, for other personality types, but I think that might be it for now.

In the new version coming up, strange moods are tracked in world generation. Does it only apply to civilizations or could I, say, give gnomes the ability to have strange moods and therefore have non-civ creatures creating artifacts?
...
Strange moods are currently a creature-level token, hence why I ask about giving it to non-civ creatures.

It happens during the job advancement code, and it's much more common for the crafting professions, especially for weapons and armor in world gen.  So I think they'd need to be at a site with an entity, since job advancement is currently governed by that.

With the current split between body and soul, and upcoming features regarding this, when will a being count as dead? When their original body dies? When their current body dies? When their "core body" dies (if it's some kind of hive-mind creature)? Or, if the being could survive without a body (i.e. some body-possessing spirit), when their soul is banished or destroyed in some way? Will beings whose souls reside in items die when the item is destroyed?

Miuramir's response covers it; I just wanted to add that there's an interesting question of what the camera is like here.  I figure it should stay with the soul, if the soul is integrated, but what if the soul is split?  Whatever the player represents, I suppose, "the will" or something.  So your skills and personality might be stolen and placed in gems you have to get back, but if your will is stolen and put in a gem, that that's it for you until the situation is fixed, maybe...

Will myth/magic extend to medical care? For example, potions, rituals, etc? And will the dwarves perform such cures even if they may not actually be effective (more myth than fact)? Could they even perform dangerous treatments that later get learned away by scholars?

It's in the realm of effects which can be applied in the myth generator now.  I'm not sure about superstition...  it makes sense that they would do these things, but having them perform specific fake rituals for any purpose would be a lesser priority if it becomes troublesome.  It would be intriguing for these things to fill voids not filled by scholars.

i) Will the equipment and/or environment of temples have any impact on the concept of "holiness" of the sanctum? For example a displayed perfect gem (as artefact) for a deity connected with juwels, tons of displayed gold coins for wealth, a lovely water pond for water, etc.?

ii) Is it planned to add a FAIL-option in crafting? For example a dabbling stoneworker works on a rock mug with the effect of destroying his stone for no result?

iii) Will there be divine knowledge? For example a proficient mathematician gets a vision by Banach, Deity of Norms, which he afterwards can ponder on in his library?

i) I'm not sure what'll end up happening here.  The werewolf and vampire cursing deities certainly seem to care that everything is place, and that sort of thing'll have to be systematized, then there are the other senses of it.

ii) The idea was to add five negative quality levels.  I'm not sure if that'll also include complete failure, though it probably should for some jobs.

iii) It already works this way with the secrets of life and death that the death gods put on slabs for necromancers, and I imagine we can have Prometheus-type situations and other teaching sorts of situations, for knowledge and skills.  Unclear when that'll fit in; I have notes for it for the myth generator, but there are a lot of notes.

1. If an person breaks the behavior required to get a specific afterlife will there be ways in some worlds to atone for their sins to regain access to that afterlife? Possibly through penance?
2. What are some bizarre corruption ideas you'd eventually like to make possible in worlds with magic?

1. That certainly makes sense as something to generate with the other rules.
2. Ha, I write a lot of crap down, but I don't really keep favorites handy.  The magical effects themselves'll provide a ton of simple examples, since we can just turn them on, either personally or in auras.  We threw 31 corruption adjectives into the myth-generator for the demo, and they are all feasible given some interpretation, but those came down to material/physical/psychological state, soul state, visibility state, planar location (partial, permanent, sudden, etc), (un)life state, emissions.  Of course you can imagine the body being twisted or infested in whatever way.  Some of the more interesting ones probably involve interpersonal relationships, like not being able to be remembered, or becoming haunted, or more linked to a specific supernatural being, that kind of thing.

I've recently been trying to teach myself to play the guitar and have been learning to play the DF theme musics. The main theme is very challenging! It is a complicated and nuanced piece and you must be quite musically talented to have written it, let alone play it.

If I may ask, what was your writing/development process like for the main theme? Will we perhaps ever see some more of your musical/guitar work, as additional soundtracks for Dwarf Fortress or otherwise?

As I recollect now after...  13 years or however long...  I knew I wanted a recurring theme, and something that I could imagine dwarves working, happy, and dying to, heh, and a little subterranean and mysterious.  It also needed to loop, so it has an ending that vaguely fits into the first bar (though the recording is crappy there).  I also like the tension and harmony you get from open strings mixed into nearby stopped strings, and arpeggios, so it formed around that.  I just sat down and played things that sounded neat and proper for some days, and wrote them down in tab.

I still play, but I haven't had occasion to record anything for many years, and I haven't composed anything new.  I liked the process, but it's hard to find time these days.

I get the impression that the upcoming magic framework will draw on a wide range of influences, both historical and otherwise, for its many permutations. Will it include the concept of magical body-parts, as seen in various parts of Africa? These organs might be species-wide (e.g. goblin-tongues having efficacy for illusions) or caste-specific (e.g. beards being used for martial potions) or the result of certain abnormalities (e.g. the livers of albino dwarves combating the effects of alcohol.)

Assuming the answer to my first question is "Yes," will historical figures respond to the existence of mystical organs? Will we see goblin bandits prowling the land for unwitting donors, then selling their finds to apothecaries? Might black-markets pop up as a result?

Yeah, I suspect that sort of thing will arise not necessarily directly as a cultural influence, but just because it's very common in generic fantasy settings as well.  The myth generator doesn't yet have the in-game critters to utilize, so it just refers to "very rare ingredients" in the write-ups, but the idea there was to specify everything, to whatever degree and according to whatever metaphysical system.

In our discussions of industrial magic etc., there's that kind of idea, yeah, that economies etc. should spring up around these things when it's appropriate.  That won't happen automatically, so I imagine we'll see it come in in pieces.  But world gen already has quite a bit of economics going on -- numerically tracked stockpiles of all kinds of specific goods, trade, production, etc., and these could all work together.

What exactly happens when our troops arrive at a site for a raid? I've had a few instances now where my troops will show up at a populated site to raid, only to report back that they couldn't find anything. What exactly are they looking for in a raid? Isn't it just a generic "kill some folks, steal stuff if you can" order?

Yeah, raids are all stealthy now -- the people they fight are people they failed their stealth rolls against.  It is quite likely that we'll have some new raid options in the coming releases, including something like "pillage" that allows for an attack which might use stealth for surprise at first, but which prioritizes looting over stealth, and invites fighting.  I imagine we'll get quite a few new options, as it's a fun, new screen that has a lot of room to grow quickly with great game benefits.

For now, artifact are most of the time stored just after created, and never "used" again after, whatever they are. They can just be stolen, or passed over, or given. Is there any further plans for artifacts, as giving them a bigger role (like a legendary sword actually used to kill) or is it the way you have imagined it ?

And, what are your plans moving forward with artifacts?

It certainly makes sense that items should be used for their purpose.  I think we've been slow to do this partially because magic had been in and out of the game early on, and magical powers for many artifacts are now near-term, so it didn't make sense to mess with it this time either.  But they shouldn't be leaving all these objects on pedestals.

We haven't finalized plans for either of the next categories of changes: tweaks and small improvements before magic, and what we are going to do with them during magic.  In the first case, we had planned to use them for rewards and have collectors and so forth earlier, and I'm not sure if we'll end up going that direction.  Plans must integrated, and there's obviously a lot of cool stuff that can be done with the new civ screen and army changes in both modes that we have to mull over a bit.  There are of course, a lot of things that can be done with artifacts and magic.

Hey toady, update is pretty cool so far, but im wondering, is there a way to ask about an artifact im looking for, it doenst show up in asking for directions.

I think this is definitely in the bug-ish category; you don't seem to be able to do certain followups I thought would be available.

Way back when work on this release started, you mentioned that worldgen moods might have a chance of failing, in the dramatic way they do in player fortresses. Did this make it into the release (yet)?

Haven't noticed anything while browsing Legends, but not sure what I'd be looking for. I've noticed some pretty difficult to get hold of materials are being used for artifacts, so I guess they have an easier time of it.

Yeah, it doesn't simulate the difficulty of the artifacts; it looks like there's a 25% chance of failure, unless it's a fell mood (those always go through at the moment.)  All of the regular failure options are available, and they'll either attack the community, or leap to their death, or go thirsty/starve.

So, visitors are jumping the gun a little and turning up before you have a tavern/temple right now due to some bug or whatever. That's fine, and I guess you're working on a fix. But my question is, are the early monster slayers also part of this bug? I kind of like that they show up early. I can't imagine monster hunters requiring a room in a tavern before they march off happily into your caverns. Bunch of dwarves about to strike the earth? Can only result in the kind of Fun a monster slayer lives for!

*Another* mentioned the cavern trigger, and that's how it is supposed to work.  I don't remember if there's a timer or caravan rumors or something linked to the discovery, of if it is just automatic, but breaching any layer will get them coming.  Any that arrive before that are part of the problem.

Are there currently any plans to allow civs to go to war with one another over values, rather than only over ethics? This would allow for civs from the same entity raw to go to war with one another. For example humans fighting other humans, which now can only be done by adding a new human entity raw.

It does take personality into account, and religious differences, but yeah, I guess human-to-human civ level wars are rare or nonexistent.  Certainly values should matter, some of them anyway.  But human-to-human civ level wars not based on values aren't uncommon in real life, so there are other angles for that that we haven't gotten to as well.

Will we ever get towns that simply don't like strangers in general and will express that? A lot of good stories come from those sorts of villages/towns in fantasy. And in horror (eg, the shadow over innsmouth by hp Lovecraft)

The goblin towns are already like that, heh.  It's a matter of how bad things can get elsewhere -- I expect the human towns will continue to get a wider spread of ethics/etc.  Their values spread are already pretty wide, but it's not reflected in the ethics, partially because of the big release slated for after magic.

Corruption of various sorts has come up in the notes for magic multiple times, but I haven't noticed one particular subject, the corruption of artifacts. Could we see the magical properties of an artifact altered after its creation? For instance, a priest or avatar of a god of death is slain and the artifact scepter that sprays miasma is taken by a fire demon who then corrupts it to instead shoot gouts of flame? Could we see an adventurer's named weapon of mundane origin imbued with magical properties as the result of their interaction/relation to some god, spirit, or demon?

Yeah, I don't think that sort of thing has come up a lot in the discussions, compared to corruptions of people or the land, and it makes as much sense.

are you planning on adding any more to the xml output during this set of releases? Artifact descriptions and instruments would be great.

I'm going to do the normal set of minor suggestions, and various XML additions are in the available pool.

What are the major limiting factors of world gen STRANGE MOODS artifacts? In the process of updating my mods, I moved the token from one race that basically spammed artifacts to one that apparently is uninterested in creating artifacts.

It's currently much more common for weaponsmith, armorer and bowyer skills, and they can't have utterances (don't remember the issue, probably something with naming).  They also need to be working a job on a site for an entity.

1. There's general "harass the population of a civ" raid and "acquire artifact" raid. Will you be implementing raids that try to take over a settlement by killing and otherwise incapacitating the defenders and claim the settlement for the raider's civ?

2. Because of the whole religion and artifacts things and tombs being a thing, will there gonna be an expansion of the tomb structures where dead civ members or at least historical figures get buried if anyone finds their bodies? And will the important figures be able to be buried with artifacts?

3. If there are some methods of bringing back dead people eventually, will civs have differing opinions about resurrection?
For example, one civ might forbid acts of resurrection while the other not only allow them but encourage them

1. Pillaging-type option practically guaranteed, with unknown specifity depending on how any non-artifact loot options work.  We're flirting with the idea of having a simple administrator and tribute system before we do magic, since it'd be pretty straightforward and the civ screen is underutilized, though I'm not remotely promising anything at this point

2. At some point we should do more with tombs.  We should do artifacts in tombs certainly, to tempt people to raid them.

3. Yeah, it's unclear how this'll play out.  Opinions on magic in general are required at some point, but the first release is less certain.

[ZM5]

Damn, first time I've seen a two-parter FOTF reply. Thanks for the answers, Toady. Great to know what erratic behavior does, I can do some fully intentional evil stuff with it right now, hee hee.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Thanks for the answers! Looking forward to seeing what the next few months bring.

[Fleeting Frames]

Yeah, matching it with personality change seems to give one neat package. Interesting answers definitely.

Will the (justly or not) suspected artifact thieves have a way of clearing their name? Or is the suspicion something they'll just have to deal with on their job?

I'm not sure what this is referring to.  If there's a rumor of somebody taking an artifact, it is true, the way the game works now.

Fake/secret/new identities. i.e. Stozu could just take on a new identity as Amxu, but instead of telling people they're whole new person they could tell that one part of their reputation doesn't hold.

Shame it runs into problems with lying, though.

[Knight Otu]

Thanks for the answers, Toady!

(It's too early to tell, but the problem with my entity may have been that their creature raws included the SUPERNATURAL tag - I probably added it since they're fey folk.)