Thanks to Rubik, golemgunk, FantasticDorf, PatrikLundell, Max^TM, MrWiggles, Fleeting Frames, LordBaal, Inarius, Untelligent, voliol, Shonai_Dweller, Untrustedlife and anybody I missed for helping to answer questions this time!
is there a reason the entity created when an adventurer claims a site has no links back to their parent entity? A fort group has their new entity and a link to the parent civ so the world responds properly, so I tested by going in with dfhack and manually adding those links in, the rest of the world then seemed to respond to my entity in a more normal fashion. Was that "starting from scratch" state intentional, or was it more of a bug/just something you didn't get around to yet?
I think at the time it had to do with the annoying fact that the culture vs. civilization is still stuck in a single parent entity right now, and I didn't want adventurers to have to carry their higher-up allegiances automatically along with them to the new site, or that they might have multiple civs they've done things for and it shouldn't pick one over the other. At the same time, it still uses an old function to pull a default civ from the adventurer (to copy the cultural information from). So it's just a mess, and not an easy one to fix in any truly satisfactory way. Hopefully the distinctions gained during the customs/etc. release will help tease this apart, though the burden assumed by that release continues to increase. I should probably stick the site under the default civ for now, just to avoid problems.
Is there a plan for travelers to use roads and bridges? Would there some benefit to it? But some risk, such as increased bandit activity? Would players be able to set up a camp on a key bridge or a major highway, and steal from travelers?
Are there plans for companions to need food, as well as travelers on the world map?
Yeah, we have them, and we hope for them to be used at some point. You'd move faster, especially when we get to proper undergrowth, wetlands and the annoyances of crossing water, and other issues faced by wilderness travelers.
The problem of food for other people is tied in with the economy, farming, caravans, property and all that. We just don't have a means of respecting inventory in travel right now, and all the resupply issues. It'll be a while yet.
What can make a site holy and a target for pilgrimage, aside from artifact relics? Is there anything else right now? Can any sites become holy, or just settlements?
We haven't done much with this yet! It was sort of a random aside on agents. Temples and holy relics are targets, but nothing particularly holy happens in the wilderness right now. It'll be cool to do more with it, but it is barebones currently.
Units have some awareness of the inventory of other units, either in general passing or from actually doing actions like demanding something be dropped or freaking out over drawn weapons. With the artifact awareness you mentioned previously where certain items are more noteworthy, will this also lead to things like dwarves noticing what others are wearing and being jealous/happy/catty, bandits taking a look at a trophy-belt of teeth and well used weapon before deciding to try to roll someone else, and things like out-of-towners showing up with bits of weird clothing and unusual jewelry starting off a chain of gossip?
None of that came up, but it would happen in that exact spot of the code, yeah. It's just a matter of work now, and avoiding slowdowns.
What are your thoughts on natural non-unique magical items, such as the golden apples from norse mythology and the the dragon's teeth (those that spawned soldiers) from greece mythology?
We have some in the myth generator system already -- like magical objects that can be made from cosmic egg shell fragments and so forth (whether it is as a catalyst for spells, a potion, ointment, etc. -- we have several options and will likely have more by the time they are added). We're all for the more magical worlds having lots of that kind of thing.
What do you think of the last guardian as a model for forgotten beasts?
I haven't played the game or read any of the lore, but it seems friendly or something. More like a good DF titan.
Will the system of Ages change with the myth update? Right now it's based on the number of beasts and mundane creatures in the world and total population proportions of civilized races. How will this change, if at all?
LordBaal mentioned it might vary with the fantasy level (an all-human world would need a different age structure), and Inarius mentioned we'd have more guidance based on world event structure -- there could be well-defined breaks that don't depend on populations. We'll probably still have the old system to fall back on if the myth generator doesn't come up with anything better.
Is the army arc, as a design/timeline conceit, well and truly dead? If so, can we get some sort of post-mortem? In particular, the basic gameplay elements that could make fort mode a bit more strategy-oriented, with players taking a more active governance role and sending out armies (partly composed of hill dwarves) to conquer and stuff. I'm asking now because artifact retrieval seems mechanically related. Will a lot of army arc stuff tie into that? I imagine some will come up in embark scenarios too, and some bits are probably in the no timeline category.
It has been smeared out. The previous world activation was a huge part of the army arc, and now we have little groups and armies running all over the place. The dwarves having squads sent out from the fort is another chunk of it that'll be up with this release. None of the army arc goals are scuttled, but I suspect it'll continue to be put together piecemeal as more supporting mechanics come in. Whatever causes the first army to hold non-artifact items (caravans?) will be a big step, as well as the entities understanding property better. Really, the armies could have been the focus without any of that, but this way also works and will have some extra richness built in, even if it takes years longer.
With the new identities system, could an adventurer conceivably gain a criminal reputation in a town as one identity, get a hand chopped off by something somewhere else, then go to another town and raise the hand up and claim that you had killed your secret alter ego?
would it be possible to go around claiming you were responsible for slaying a monster or whatnot as part of a fake identity? Naturally this would run the risk of bumping into someone who had actually done it, or someone who had been attacked by it at some point after you claimed to have bumped it off, I'd suppose.
Unfortunately, there are no specific lies about events right now (unless you count prophecies). I still haven't tackled that. Just breaking apart the reputations/general facts about identity was enough to bite off for this time. So you can't make a specific false claim about having killed yourself or somebody else. It remains a difficult problem.
Three questions regarding needs and their future: can dwarves fulfill all the needs they have in the current version? Are they supposed to be able to do that? How responsible will the player be for fulfilling the dwarves' needs? To specify, will dwarves who want to practice a martial art pick up training weapons by themselves and practice and dwarves who want to wander have a specific task for that et cetera, or will certain needs require player micromanagement in the future?
PatrikLundell and Fleeting Frames went into specifics. The ideal situation would involve a great deal more dwarven autonomy, but for e.g. crafting needs, you start to run into the problem of free-willed dwarves using fort resources you might want to set aside, which gets us into the property stuff we haven't handled yet (and the ruins of the removed economy stuff). It would be cool if you didn't have to babysit specific needs, but rather just had a general sense of what you were missing (through some aggregate of the grumpiness or whatever), though for certain needs it's harder to avoid micromanagement (say, wandering -- you'll be able to satisfy that in the next release by sending the dwarf off with a squad, but that's very micro-y... but a non-micro wandering involves you losing the dwarf entirely at times which might be incredibly inconvenient for you... which might be cool mostly... but if it isn't fine, you'd have to micro some kind of movement restriction on them... which is annoying).
How will attempting to root out spies in fortress mode be handled, from the player's perspective? If they're given any ability to actively order investigations or interrogate people, which dwarf would be in charge of such things?
I'm not quite sure how it is going to play out right now. The whole agent thing is sort of half-baked since they only relate to artifacts, but it's the only way goblin civs could participate in artifacts and obtain location rumors for this release, so something had to be done. At the same time, for other civ types, any diplomat/trader that comes to your fortress is about as much of a spy as the current agents as far as it comes to their ability to report artifact locations, and for goblins vs the fort, they are kind of attack-happy already so having a spy leave with an artifact report would just up the odds. When they do anything more insidious, finding agents in advance will matter a lot more. Not ruling some changes out though, especially since some confusion might happen by default if the agent is known by others.
Toady will fantasy "dials" or sliders affect species propieties in anyway? I mean, the most mudane of worlds would have elves without the magic and goblins eating? Or those races would be completely removed and only humans would remain at those settings?
The most mundane of worlds would not have elves or goblins at all, yeah. At higher magic settings, additional magical properties will be added, but I'm not sure there are going to be "more mundane" versions of existing vanilla creatures. They are pretty boring as they stand.
While we are on the subject might as well ask, what is the material definition/token of grown wood? Or is it purely a boolean setting & out of bounds thing generated by elves
It's just a flag right now.
So, now that player fake identities are in, is it possible to assume the identity of a goblin civ member and wander around a dark fortress without everyone freaking out? Will they be suspicious if you're playing a dwarf and there aren't any dwarves living in that civ? And would they just know that you're supposed to be impersonating a goblin civ member the moment you walk into town, or would you have to talk to someone first?
What do you mean by "screw up"? Would that be claiming multiple identities in the presence of somebody? If I decide to go spy on the goblins by assuming a fake identity, will I need to leave companions behind or risk all my identities being compromised? Will any clothing obscure features enough to allow us to claim multiple identities to the same people?
Yeah, that's part of this release -- goblins initiate a conversation instead of immediately attacking strangers (in the same category as brigands and guards watching an artifact be returned). Your identity is not passed on to them until you speak, so you have to tell them promptly or risk violence. This is part of what I'm finishing up though -- there aren't any super interesting interrogation moments, and your companions are still a disaster.
Yeah, you can screw up your impersonation in general if you forget to assume your identity when returning to a place, or if a traveler has seen you in a previous identity. Haven't done anything with disguises yet, though they are part of the Hero role up on dev and I'd like to do something... probably won't get to it.
Will There ever be a way to specify which beast we want to beat about in a conversation? With the current system, we can accidentally brag about killing someone's family, which obviously wouldn't happen on accident on real life.
Somebody mentioned that you can bring up the specific incident (as bad as the menu is). That other general option is there just because the people you meet have the same button, but it is sort of superfluous now.
could we be able to make plaster walls? In mediaval times, most buildings had plaster on them, and it would be cool for humans.
Like a lot of the materials in the game, we haven't gotten into broad uses. We have plaster casts for broken limbs, but you can't really do anything else with the material, which is odd. I have no idea when we'll be expanding such systems.
What happens to an invading army when it retreats from the player's site? Do all surviving members head back home, teleport there or disappear completely?
I think they make the journey back home, though I haven't observed them do it. I'd been thinking about this one recently, since we are about to have dwarf squads travel out of the fort, and I'm going to have some debug visualization to test it, whereupon I'll also see whatever other disasters are wandering the world. Perhaps it's just a mess, though we do see them often behaving well in adventure mode debugging.
So now that we will be able to send troops to find artifacts outside our fortress, will other fortress do the same while we are playing fortress mode? What about worldgen? Will our tavern be visited by groups of mercs, heroes and others passing by on their quests to retrieve artifacts? Will we face sieges or acute thievery if such artifacts are in our possession?
Yeah, they already do the first part. I haven't gotten to fort mode yet, so I haven't done the visitors, but they'll drop by and there are going to be artifact-related antics.
> In prior comments a few months before the 42.01 update you mentioned a system of natural philosophers scribing down significant animal training level (jump from no knowledge to few facts etc.) as a way to progress & eventually surpass the hard cap of 'expert knowledge' and domesticate the species fully. Would this model of writing down milestones and then having a mooded book as a result be a good example of your current thoughts on future implementation of significant innovations created by scholars with impact to releasing features (such as new reactions etc.) into gameplay?
> Will the library & tavern 'Part 2' forseeably arrive at the same time on the roadmap when you are free of your current developmental focus or in seperate installments so you can focus on them indepth individually (providing a additional museum zone & unfinished new devgoals for museums might not mean that it is extended to a joint part 3)
It seems fine to me, but it's part of a larger problem and I'm not sure what's going to happen. Right now, the scholar knowledge and professional skills sort of complement each other, when they should in fact overlap a lot. So I'm not sure what we're going to do when it really comes down to it -- take your floodgates away until somebody invents them and you get a skilled professional or a book in your fortress? It'd have to be something like that, but when applied to every profession, it might be way too disruptive. We're willing to give it a shot as we go, anyway. Though we still have a lot to do just in terms of cataloguing what innovations should be required for every profession to flesh out the scholar knowledge and then link it back to professions (there are extensive suggestion threads along these lines). Not that every or even most professions should have to be initiated by scholars in libraries.
I have no idea what we're going to do after the current ordered releases.
Since the myth release will seemingly take a long time to finish, do you think that you will break it up into two or more releases?
We hope so! The upcoming artifact release is already one of these, since it was all going to be lumped in together at some point. After the artifact release, while we're cleaning up bugs, we'll try to update the dev pages with clear divisions. There are some large unsplittable pills to swallow among the myth/magic stuff -- when we do planar maps for instance, that'll probably be six months all on its own, which is especially long when you consider how often I underestimate things. But a lot of good comes out of it, so it's worth it (seeing your dwarf armies/diplomats simultaneously with your fort, the afterlife, planar exploration, etc.).
Once rumors are more thoroughly implemented, will the personality of people who witness an event affect the speed at which a rumor spreads? For example, if I hand off an artifact to a lord and his bodyguards are very gregarious, or lack a sense of duty, would they be more likely to spread the rumor than guards who had the opposite traits? On a related note, would relationship between witnesses and the people involved in an event relate to the speed at which a rumor spreads?
Right now there's only the initial time before it is known by everybody at a site (which is always ~2 hours I think). Then it is spread by travelers. It's slow and hard to control anything beyond that. So yeah, some of these as initial effects would be fair game, or effects applied to what a traveler talks about or how much they talk, but we couldn't really control the speed finely beyond that.
Regarding upcoming worldgen artifact moods:
Will the limit of once per dwarf still apply to worldgen moods? (i.e is this a 'game' limit or a 'lore' limit?)
Will historical dwarves mood in fortress mode if they've previously mooded in worldgen?
Yeah, it's a 'lore' limit, at least prior to us getting the myth release, where a potential explanation of what's actually going on is on the table.
Author
Topic: Future of the Fortress (Read 1443687 times)