Thanks to FantasticDorf, PatrikLundell, Shonai_Dweller, KittyTac, Miuramir, therahedwig, Bumber, MrWiggles, Rockphed, golemgunk, Knight Otu, and everybody else who helped to answer questions for this month!
(Toady: 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.)
What sort of quibbles and how far does the notion of a "quibble" or underlying structure extend to? Strictly map-gen related or just "in general" or super secret !!fun!! things you want to do in caverns/underground again?
- Geology-wise: What displeases you most about caves/underground at the present? Absence of features? Difficulty in access or travelling through? Lack of variety in flora/fauna? Bugs and errors, or oddities that are just annoyingly inconsistent?
- Equally, even if you are displeased by something currently, how likely would those things be to actually be DIRECTLY hit by the planar/magical landform re-write? I can definitely imagine something being done like each cavern layer being its own little plane of existence...
- BUT before i go any further with that, i should admit that last paragraph really just begins to sound like a suggestion list of features... It's very easy to get carried away with this. So: How do you intend to say "Ok, that's enough, for now."
- Lastly, about the "rewrite" itself ... If the events in the myth generator specifically influence the map generation at a fundamental "underlying structures" level, how intense of a rewrite would that actually be, without dealing with these "quibbles" at all? Not asking for an ETA, just how many times you'd have to press "delete" or "//" on the code. (Like, a % that would just be "gone" by the end of it.)
For landforms, the quibbles there were related to map-gen. Other bits will have other quibbles.
Geology-wise: I don't like the three layers, especially how global elevation issues press them deep underground, and I don't like the restriction of minerals to little horizontal blocks. The critter variety'll have to be handled procedurally, so I'm not worried about that so much. Access isn't an issue (aside from entrance bugs), and part of your job is creating it, but travel is bad. And I think travel might be made worse as layer shape diversity increases, so we'll have to watch out.
Due to some of the planar/landform features we want, it's quite likely a cave gutting would be linked to it. I don't think the three layer notion will survive; a large layer might still be produced, but we can afford better 3D linkages by moving over to something more like a local cube system with mid and global data, though I haven't settled on that. A trickier question might be how it interacts with the aboveground elevation and whether it's an opportune time to prepare for cliffs and canyons.
Enough: This is a general issue with the myth/magic stuff, since there can always be more. It'll be a matter of time spent as much as anything, since we'll need to move on in time.
It's probably as bad as the Z-coordinate -- I'll have to hit different things in many cases, but it feels about the same size. It doesn't feel like a lot will be gone outright, just that it'll be adjusted. It could be that most of the 'feature' code is removed, but I've never been happy with that -- the way it's set up, it has less reality to it than the aboveground regions like forests, and that's been trouble.
With pillaging & site seizing realizations, could [POWER] (and power value) dreams of 'own the entire world' be realised through continuous play on fortress mode eventually?
A problem i can see with non-mission based indiscriminate pillaging is weight restrictions carrying your loot home do you have any plans for how fortress players could tackle this issue (ei assigned pack animals) or will feasibly the game will generate caravans for purpose?
A while ago in the late July-August FotF response even though the original question was broad in the scope of a full army, how will have this position have changed for the next few releases with outbound dwarf groups and will our pillagers be able to raze a site if they havent depopulated it into a ruin first?
Ha, I guess so, though I'm not sure you'll have armies large enough until we get to that; something might be theoretically on the table there, but maybe not.
Since the issue with pillaging was doing items vs. armies, I'm not sure what we'll end up doing there -- it might be something as simple as a flag and a few variables, rather than the full inventory, since it's more of an economy thing and there are lots of potential problems. I don't think we'll see player wagons, though we might see tribute wagons if we're fortunate.
Raze. It's possible it could be an option, as it's supported for other armies now.
Is it possible for civilizations off the playable map will exist in some form? Could we conceivably have histories where new entities or maybe even new species to invade/migrate to the known world a considerable amount of time after worldgen? Would it be possible in future editions to found a fortress using 'outsider' critters like you can play in adventure mode?
We used to have those off-map civs, but it was a little odd. I expect it would be even more odd if we have extraplanar civilizations you can visit, but off-map civs in your own world that you can't visit. I'm not sure we'll come back to them for that reason.
Right now, dwarven culture seems pretty OK with fell moods occurring - even though it involves the explicit murder of a sentient creature. Will we ever see dwarves facing some legal repercussions from creating a fell artifact?
Ha, yeah, it has always been a bit odd. Shonai_Dweller addressed the myth gen side of it, in terms of fell moods possibly being procedural, say, but in general, it should count as a crime, even if an artifact is produced. Dwarves aren't that morally defective.
At the moment, are there any particular conditions that would cause defenders to capture infiltrators rather than kill them outright during raids?
No, it's all random right now, if you lose the fight.
3. Will gods and other deities have their own avatars? Can avatars have that aura that affects anything inside it? (e.g. avatars of gods of death have aura that can make living things sick. gods of fires and other elements have different aura) Can the avatars have the associated power as their god of origin?
It's something we've considered as a possibility. Miuramir was thorough on your other questions, and the same sort of thing applies here, though clearly we haven't considered everything, and those things we've considered aren't all going in at first.
will modders eventually be able to customize megabeast lairs and habits, or potentially recreate some of the stuff from old versions?
being able to create your own templates for site types, both civ sites and beast lairs - possibly allowing support for different habits than the current ones as well. I'd love for some megas, i.e ettins, to, lets say, have cages full of prisoners, set up in a line next to a large table with a cleaver stuck to it and meat in a bucket next to it, or like the old tentacle demons just having caged prisoners with the implications being obvious - basically little small story stuff that adds a bit of flavour, allows for new mission types as well.
I'm not sure what sort of capabilities we're going to end up with there. At some point I imagine the fixed site definitions will give way to somthing more modular, but there's also an editor coming at some point, and everything has to play nice with the myth generator as well.
Were worldgen artifacts supposed to be just masterwork quality with the artifact flags set?
Do said artifact flags imbue the relevant accuracy/indestructibility benefits beyond having a name/tracked history?
Were items an adventurer names supposed to get anything beyond being named?
Was the rumors list supposed to end up with dozens of pages about how a particular artifact is absent from every site you've visited and didn't see it at, or should that be another bug report?
It depends. The dwarf ones are supposed to be like fort-mode dwarf ones, and the named heroic ones, relics, etc. are supposed to be like regular objects. Naming isn't supposed to do anything on its own. There's a "crafted artifact" flag that's supposed to do some of the other stuff, but I don't recall if that's working.
The negative rumors are required, but they need to be partially hidden.
Do you plan on adding any more (l)ocations?
I don't have specific plans in the near-term, but I imagine it'll keep coming up. These are the 'structures' from legends; so theoretically stuff like dungeons would already be supportable (not that they really mean anything), and when new things are added throughout the world, they can be considered for the fort, much like the taverns and libraries.
Is Dwarf Fortress losing a battle against itself in terms of FPS? As DF keeps getting more complex, I see people getting more and more desperate to maintain a playable FPS. If people are forced to embark on small worlds with 5 year histories to maintain a playable FPS, isn't that leaving much of the game behind? How possible will it be to increase processing efficiency going forward without reworking the whole game? I worry about a future where DF has more and more features, and players are forced to disable more and more of them to make the game playable.
I suppose I could phrase it another way: What is the target? What size world, length of history, embark size, and number of dwarves should we be able to have, and what FPS should we have with those conditions?
I haven't seen an increase in such complaints. It seems about the same as, say, five years ago (the new stuttering bug is a different matter of course). Somebody mentioned there's still more that can be done without a major rewrite, and this work has been ongoing as the game evolves. I don't have specific targets.
1. You mentioned that corruptions can affect a person's memory such as forgetting their friends, how would this work for a player adventurer? Would they just not know about certain people any more?
2. One of the needs our adventurers can have is to be with friends, how would our adventurers go about acquiring friends once such activities are eventually added?
3. In some worlds where magic exists once someone gets physically corrupted would others react badly to them? Would they're friends and family be more likely to accept them after the corruption occurs?
4. Some of the corruptions in the myth and magic screen shots don't seem necessarily bad, an example being "becoming more dreamlike", would such corruptions actually improve a person's social appeal to others?
1. Once player adventurers are able to marry people how would they go about doing it?
2. Would marriage customs vary among civilizations?
3. One need our adventurers can have is make love, would it be possible to satisfy this need through other means besides marrying and having a spouse?
4. Once the myth and magic arc is complete in worlds where people can get reincarnated will that occur through their souls going to new born babies?
5. If so will the child have all the memories from their past life immediately or will they get them at a delayed pace or will they not know their past life at all?
6. In worlds with magic and corruptions would corruptions be possible that affect a magic user's descendants, for example one such corruption being all their children will be born with extra eyes.
7. Can some corruptions be inherited from magic user parent to child?
8. Will curses be possible that affect the offender's descendants instead or as well as them?
1. In some worlds with magic if two people from two different families that both had magic bloodlines had a child would that child have access to the magic from both bloodlines?
3. In some worlds with magic would it be possible for a magic bloodline to be created post world gen through some magical event turning a normal bloodline magical?
1. There's something annoying about it, since anything that drives people to paper notes is frowned upon these days, but that would be the result of unified mechanics; either that or a 'forgotten' flag on the relationship.
2. In fort mode they do it by chatting. We vaguely have chatting, about, say, the family and weather, but there needs to be a bit more for it to work.
3+4. This sounds reasonable, but it's unclear what'll happen.
1+2. Yeah, it likely depends, though we won't get to all customs at once with the customs release.
3. There's a lover relationship currently, though it isn't in adventure mode.
4+5+6+7+8+1+3. This sounds reasonable, but it's unclear what'll happen.
Have you given thought to upgrading to SDL 2.0?
Ah, I don't know anything about it, or why it might be necessary vs. the issues/annoyances in doing so. Generally messing with the SDL code is beyond me to do on my own.
In the long term, do you see the emulation of bureaucratic functions necessary, or best left abstracted? Both for worldgen history keeping, as well as active-fortress and adventure level actions.
For instance, attempting to get a loan from a local banker, or making written dictations of laws on sites by siteholders.
The question doesn't concern whether these actions can happen, but whether the guts and causes of said actions would occur (paperwork, people passing along dictations among groups, et cetera).
I remember the arsenal dwarf was an annoyance and a source of issues. Both for memory reasons and those reasons, I expect certain mundane bits will be left alone. There's also the matter of dev time; adding paperwork versus adding <thing X> will mostly be decided for thing X, I expect. All the same, certain related issues like messengers and supplies are more likely.
Are there any easter eggs still hidden in the game that players haven't found yet?
Not that I'm aware of!
what about if one of those [ALWAYS] tokens isn't present but the creature still has, lets say, a mount role innately? Will they still be used as that role?
Should be, yeah.
Is revenge for your civs failed raids/sieges or against groups who've raided them going to be an option during this release? Say, outpost liaison tells you how one of the greatest generals of the civ was captured during a siege, and they'll give you so many urists worth of stuff for free in the next caravan or they'll promise a large steel shipment or something similar in return for his return?
This release? You mean the set before the myth stuff? I'm not sure; there's going to be quite a bit more 'c' screen antics but I don't know which direction it'll go yet in terms of centering on your fort vs. involvement with your civ, since we aren't fully into strategic concerns (but your story example would be fine.)
1.Will there be a craetion scale events after world gen like humens creation or a forest become a desert?
2.will myth and magic effect dwarves preferenses like Urist McOpellover like dogs becuse they created Opel in the Myth or you can make Opel from dogs bones?
1.Race creation and region-level map changes are planned.
2.I'm not sure how specific the conceptual linkages will get there at first; certain cultural flavor might wait for some time.
The "claims" made on Fortress Mode made artifacts are just "flavor text" for the purposes of the creating fortress, correct? There's no current or near-future fortress impact based on claims like: "He/She offers it to <entity>", "He/she claims it as a family heirloom", "He/she claims it as a family heirloom in the name of the family ancestor <figure>", "He/she claims it as a personal treasure", etc., even if lost and recovered within that same Fortress Mode play-through?
I've seen Twitch streamers begin to plot the unexpected deaths of valued weaponsmiths they thought were going to hide an artifact steel battle axe in their bedroom, so many dwarven lives could be saved depending on a clear answer here!
No, these are claims like all other claims in the game, and they persist according to their type. If you retire, your fort should have quests to recover any missing entity artifacts, for instance, and the family will be happy to see any missing heirlooms returned. But they don't really come up in the fort mode in terms of people hiding things in their rooms.
is it intentional that criminals and mercenaries cannot have creature tiles specified for them?
CRIMINAL is in the list of supported unit types. If PEDDLER, PROPHET, PILGRIM and MONK are working, I have no idea why CRIMINAL isn't. Mercenary and monster slayer are a bit weird since they are tied to occupations now, and sometimes it uses the occupation rather than unit type; I'd have to poke around with that, and a bug report would be warranted if it is acting weird.
A few questions about dummied-out features:
1) How did the game classify demonic fortresses? Were they landscape features (like volcanoes and streams,) a property of map-tiles (like savagery or elevation,) or something else entirely?
2) What purpose did Important Locations serve?
3) Why were human forts removed?
1) There were underground features, like those holes or magma pits.
2) They were used for that sword-pulling mechanic, but they are still in use to save chopped down trees in places not designated as a specific adv or other site.
3) I don't remember precisely; I think it was mostly to do with getting the fresh nobles situated on-site and having sufficient populations moved there, with a dose of starvation since the sites were a bit different from bandit camps (though that part was manageable). Now that we're more settled in the land-holder code, it's a bit more possible, but I have no idea when.
do you plan to set it up so we can ask about certain artifacts at some point? Like with the next few releases or no? Makes it much harder to seek artifacts heh
I don't have a release-by-release schedule for things, but we're planning to get to it before moving on to myths.
What is the near term fate of intelligent/can-learn animal prisoners? Any chance they'll ever get access to the petition screen to be released or apply for citizenship? It seems cruel that I can make a gremlin my mayor, I can tame a cave croc and breed it, but a learning-capable troll or rodent person blunders into a trap and it's gotta die.
I'm not sure when we'll get to prisoners; I don't have near-term plans. Faulty childcare seems even worse.
I love the infodump when you show artifacts and get the "yes, don't need that, don't need that... oooh, soandso wants THAT back, and I really would appreciate you returning THIS to us if you don't mind" popup.
Having those to check on rumors to ask about is also handy, but was the spam of "absence of item x at site w, u, v, y, z, and so on" intentional or should I check if there is already a bug report for that?
Also love being able to babble prophesies, are there other hidden-ish options available under other identities?
Yeah, the negative rumors are overmuch. It should probably only go into that kind of thing when we get to specific artifact questions.
The prophecies are the only thing I remember.
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Topic: Future of the Fortress (Read 1445199 times)