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[Random_Dragon]

Just going to have to wait until human towns and villages are playable to play sites in mundane worlds.

Thing is, that is unbelievably trivial to mod in, so imagining what it'd look like in hardcoded format isn't that much of a brain-melter. Lemme give some examples I've observed in the process of making a (currently unreleased) human mod, in increasing order of effort:

1. Just make the dwarven civ use humans instead of dwarves. Only makes sense if you're absurdly lazy or want a low-fantasy world that still has a cave-dwelling entity as the playable civ.

2. Move the playable token from dwarves to humans. Like all non-playable civs they lack positions, so you're fucked if an invasion arrives, or you need to trade, or you want to commit justice, etc. But they're by far the most playable out of the box, especially compared to elves (no way to produce wood without more modding) or worse, KOBOLDS (your citizens get classified as pets and can't have their labors changed).

3. Give a playable version of the human civ direct equivalents to dwarven positions. Assuming you go the whole hog and replace generated non-site positions like the law-giver, the only thing you lose is flavor.

4. Mock up flavor-accurate equivalents to generated human positions. This is hard without string dumps to get an idea of what the generated positions do, and you may still have to take some guesswork for gameplay reasons or for flavor. For example, when I mocked up lords I didn't give them a dining room requirement, because lords reside in mead halls, so it'd be logical to assume the human norm is to dine with ones hearthpeople and honored guests.

5. Commit sorcery and get generated positions to behave properly in fortress mode, and actually show up as valid positions. This is basically what Toady would have to do to make option 4 occur automatically in low-fantasy worlds.

[GoblinCookie]

4. Mock up flavor-accurate equivalents to generated human positions. This is hard without string dumps to get an idea of what the generated positions do, and you may still have to take some guesswork for gameplay reasons or for flavor. For example, when I mocked up lords I didn't give them a dining room requirement, because lords reside in mead halls, so it'd be logical to assume the human norm is to dine with ones hearthpeople and honored guests.

Meeting a dining room requirement actually does not prohibit the lord from sharing his dining room with the whole village. 

[Random_Dragon]

Meeting a dining room requirement actually does not prohibit the lord from sharing his dining room with the whole village.

Incorrect in game terms, sadly. Mechanically, far as I can tell citizens will never use a dining room assigned to someone else, and people with an assigned dining room will favor it over an unassigned one. And assigning a dining room is how you meet the room requirement.

Thus, dwarven nobles always dine alone. :V

[AceSV]

Wanting to play as a human fortress in a human world in Dwarf Fortress doesn't make sense to me.  Opening some kind of cosmic rift from the dwarf realm into the human realm and preaching the way of booze, minecarts and magma does sound like a cool premise for a fortress. 

[PatrikLundell]

I believe I've seen dorfs occasionally hog a noble's dining room or office, but it's rare. I guess it might happen if all regular dining room tables are taken (I think my observations were before the introduction of libraries), for instance.

I don't think AceSV's desires are going to be fulfilled by vanilla DF, as Toady strives to make the worlds consistent. However, I guess it might be possible to hack/mod it to enable playing as dorfs, blorgs (or whatever the bizarre end races may end up being called), etc. in a world where they can't be generated. One potential attempt could be to generate a world with a dead civ and hack that civ post world generation but before embark. It will be some time before any such attempts can be tried, however.. Don't be surprised if a mundane world ends up not having caverns or a magma sea, though, in which case the only way to get magma would be via volcano access.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Just going to have to wait until human towns and villages are playable to play sites in mundane worlds.

Thing is, that is unbelievably trivial to mod in, so imagining what it'd look like in hardcoded format isn't that much of a brain-melter. Lemme give some examples I've observed in the process of making a (currently unreleased) human mod, in increasing order of effort:

1. Just make the dwarven civ use humans instead of dwarves. Only makes sense if you're absurdly lazy or want a low-fantasy world that still has a cave-dwelling entity as the playable civ.

2. Move the playable token from dwarves to humans. Like all non-playable civs they lack positions, so you're fucked if an invasion arrives, or you need to trade, or you want to commit justice, etc. But they're by far the most playable out of the box, especially compared to elves (no way to produce wood without more modding) or worse, KOBOLDS (your citizens get classified as pets and can't have their labors changed).

3. Give a playable version of the human civ direct equivalents to dwarven positions. Assuming you go the whole hog and replace generated non-site positions like the law-giver, the only thing you lose is flavor.

4. Mock up flavor-accurate equivalents to generated human positions. This is hard without string dumps to get an idea of what the generated positions do, and you may still have to take some guesswork for gameplay reasons or for flavor. For example, when I mocked up lords I didn't give them a dining room requirement, because lords reside in mead halls, so it'd be logical to assume the human norm is to dine with ones hearthpeople and honored guests.

5. Commit sorcery and get generated positions to behave properly in fortress mode, and actually show up as valid positions. This is basically what Toady would have to do to make option 4 occur automatically in low-fantasy worlds.

The big part is adding the tools so that the game actually makes sense. Humans live in houses, not carved out spaces.

Yes, you can use dwarf wall and roof constructions to actually put together a house, but it makes no sense as a game. In a real human settlement game you choose "carpenter's workshop" and your workers put together an actual building in which a carpenter would work. No human based game would leave the default as 'workbench left out in the rain'.

The other bit is working out how to interact with sewers and dungeons. Do you build dungeons? Are they built below you without your knowledge?

That starts to look like a human settlement game.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Wanting to play as a human fortress in a human world in Dwarf Fortress doesn't make sense to me.  Opening some kind of cosmic rift from the dwarf realm into the human realm and preaching the way of booze, minecarts and magma does sound like a cool premise for a fortress.

Dwarf Fortress is an unfortunate name (kind of like Crusader Kings - those forums are full of "what does China have to do with crusaders?" fights too.).

I don't know if you've looked at the goals or the development notes of this game, but "play a dwarf fortress" is one tiny part of the plan.

The goal is the simulation of a fantasy world (one which is unique for every single player) in which you can play multiple roles (sites, single characters, whole civs maybe).

I'm sorry this doesn't make sense to you, but don't worry the aim is for maximum customization too so you'll always be able to play as dwarves in a fortress.

Opening up a rift into the dwarf world might happen, yes but only if specific procedurally generated variables happen across that particular scenario. Nothing's scripted (the last remnants of scripted events from the old days of the game will be gone one day).

[Random_Dragon]

The big part is adding the tools so that the game actually makes sense. Humans live in houses, not carved out spaces.

Yes, you can use dwarf wall and roof constructions to actually put together a house, but it makes no sense as a game. In a real human settlement game you choose "carpenter's workshop" and your workers put together an actual building in which a carpenter would work. No human based game would leave the default as 'workbench left out in the rain'.

People can make outdoor workshops. In theory it should be up to the player whether they want to make a roof over their workshops, unless there is some logical reason to FORCE that on the player. And honestly, the current system of indoor-only furniture is annoying, because you still have to add the roof separately.

If you want to handle that all you really need is to have workshops imply a basic roof or even just a cloth tarp over the working area, by having it automatically count as indoors tiles even without a roof built overhead. Which would be far saner so long as it behaves itself should you build a real roof afterwards.

Thing is, you can indeed play Dwarf Fortress above-ground, the only major problem is how tedious walls are to build. If they could be built like bridges and roads, allowing a single job to construct multiple tiles of structure (and additionally used the same improved material efficiency) then building aboveground would be less hassle.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Who would design a village building game where shops and forges were dumped outside as default? Full of humans who never once think that a roof might be a good idea without being explicitly told first. Sounds like a pretty daft game. Nobody's forcing you to build anything, of course, but the basic tools are pretty much expected to be available. And DF Constructions just aren't up to the job yet.

Yes, you can do it if you want. Sure you can mod the existing df tools to make and play in a human village, but that's not a human village building game. It's a fun mod.

What goals can your village work towards? Where's the scaling risk vs reward that dwarves get in their hunt for candy? Where's my siege protection? Cage traps? Rock-fall traps? Completely inappropriate.

Sorry, but it's not "Unbelievably trivial" to just switch over to a human site building game. Unless you want a half-assed game. But I'd rather DF be more than that.

[Random_Dragon]

I said it was unbelievably trivial to MOD it in, for fucks sake. I then said that existing ability to mod humans to be playable would give you a rough idea of what an actual "play as humans" mode might look like, and recounted some of the hurdles I encountered along the way.

[FantasticDorf]

People have also forgotten that a human mode disfavours the underground because of sight meaning we will require some precautions to allow humans to see (especially if rules are tightened in that which humans CANNOT work or fight in complete darkness) without light sources present, glass panels don't really count as windows and fortifications are sort of ugly alternatives.

Much of the content happens underground so realistically humans would need to have a open top pit in order to work at a fast pace, or a partially constructed lit path, then of course fighting 'monsters & invasions from below the surface which in technological terms of not having steel making ablities or artifacts is much more difficult.

> As random-dragon points out, its trivially easy to make whatever changes of nobles/race/entity setup yourself using existing tools.

> Then there's the quirks to the existing human civ, they live in towns which is a different format (workshop types localised to towns?) the custom and exotic variations of armor (cross like shields) and the populous nature of animal-men due to your pseudo biome beside those who are just placed inside your civ.

> Humans declare war on other humans of the same civilisation due to variational values, so diplomacy for town rivalries is required, they also have temples etc.

So there's a checklist of features that are part or not in the game at all required.

[TheFlame52]

Right now, we find current year money in lairs. This is a bit silly. When will we be able to find historical currency?

[Shonai_Dweller]

I said it was unbelievably trivial to MOD it in, for fucks sake. I then said that existing ability to mod humans to be playable would give you a rough idea of what an actual "play as humans" mode might look like, and recounted some of the hurdles I encountered along the way.

Ok. Sorry about that. Result of reading text in the wrong tone of voice I guess.

This exchange seemed to me that you were dismissing my assumption that we'd have to wait a while for playable human villages as most of what it involves is unbelievably simple to mod (which I disagreed with, as there's a lot more needed beyond what we're able to mod right now).

Quote from: Shonai_Dweller on March 10, 2017, 08:16:45 am
Just going to have to wait until human towns and villages are playable to play sites in mundane worlds.

Thing is, that is unbelievably trivial to mod in, so imagining what it'd look like in hardcoded format isn't that much of a brain-melter. Lemme give some examples I've observed in the process of making a (currently unreleased) human mod, in increasing order of effort:

[Random_Dragon]

Ok. Sorry about that. Result of reading text in the wrong tone of voice I guess.

This exchange seemed to me that you were dismissing my assumption that we'd have to wait a while for playable human villages as most of what it involves is unbelievably simple to mod (which I disagreed with, as there's a lot more needed beyond what we're able to mod right now).

No worries. Main point is that the foundation is in reach at least to modders, so it mainly needs whatever other additional support Toady needs to add to "encourage" a human race to actually behave like an aboveground species, whether it be lighting reworks or improvements to construction efficiency.

Plus again, it gives us a way to guess what such a result might look like, depending on how many ideas Toady uses in any future implementation. Though who knows, by the time hardcoded human fortresses become a thing, the human civ might be wildly different in flavor again.

[FantasticDorf]

New dev-page is exciting (C) civilisation screen has been thrown out of the window for a scrollable map mode and the podcast reveals that since there aren't really any multiple/simultaneous maps there will be a notification that a group has done the deed. Which in itself is still very impressive.

> You can see armies travelling around, data about settlements

With the new scrollable map type, would a [SCOUT] entity unit breifly fufill the function (in such a case that you send out dwarves out to nowhere to scout out caves/shrines in fortress mode) of a fortress mode expedition group being sent out?

The whole Jason & the Argonaughts quip about sendiing out a group of somewhat heroic dwarves to kill monsters on mysterious isles was very entertaining during the podcast. Finally a use for layabout monster hunters and mercenaries to go out on a oddessey for loot & glory.

> Arrange expedition - switch to expedition leader with your companions already set for adventure mode. woot.