1. Could we expect the ability to fast-travel through dark pits/caves if they are inhabited by friendly creatures in the near or far future? What about fording rivers or climbing mountains, though those might be tied to skills like swimming and climbing.
2. What exactly is the current reload time for bows and crossbows? Is there a difference between the two?
3. Would it eventually be possible to adjust the parameters of cave civs to create sites that are less labyrinthine? Sort of like the current worldgen settings for cavern passage density.
4. If [LOCAL_POPS_PRODUCE_HEROES] is added to an intelligent creature set to only spawn as the pets of an existing civilization, will fully-fledged civilized creatures be drawn from that population of pets, or is it required that they spawn in the wilderness to join a civilization as a proper member?
1. I won't be touching the underground before the map rewrite. There is a decent chance of many things being handled then. I know river crossing is annoying, though I don't have a timeline on fixing that. Mountains are less clear; as they get steeper and more cliff-like again, it should be a local achievement to climb them, if there's any chance you can fall.
2. There is no reloading, there is a post shot delay, if I remember, which is a silly system we've wanted to change for years. I don't think we distinguished the weapons.
3. All of the sites need a lot of parameters. I agree the current dwarf/etc. sites are still completely frustrating.
4. I don't think it draws from pet populations.
Apart from being replaced by equal or stronger events, do long term memories fade over time? That is, they lose strength over the years to give the chance to other not so strong events to replace it in that long term memory spot?
That doesn't happen yet; that's the kind of thing I was considering under "grappling with long term memories" in the dev log, along with grouping memories in life stages. Whether that always means fading over time, or obsessing on a single memory, or whatever, would depend on the memory and the person, probably, as we have personality traits for that. Whatever we end up with should be interesting, story-building, relayed to the player, and not always about the simple dooming of forts. Certainly the form it has now will need to be adjusted.
Are memory slots going to be tied to the Memory attribute?
This kind of major emotional memories seem like something that everybody would have if they have a memory at all... memory as an attribute should be more subtle. Of course, right now it's so subtle as to be useless, so something has to give somewhere.
I think most people can imagine at least 8 horrific things that could happen over the course of a couple of years in-game, but what are potential long-term good memories that might help sooth a poor dorf's life? Getting married, having children, crafting ones first masterwork (possibly), being elected mayor (maybe), what else?
Depending on the person, falling in love, getting out of prison, mastering a skill... perhaps more, but they aren't trivial to look up as the emotion type impacts the magnitude of the effect and those have personality branches. We'll have to develop the system more as discussed if the balance of good memories isn't enough, and it likely isn't.
1. Will you be able to reverse undeath in the future? Or, in the case of sentient race's corpses, will undead/thralls be able to have their minds restored? Could one have a thrall fortress, then?
2. Will "Magic Missile"-type spells exist? How effective will they be, if not analogous to crossbow bolts/arrows?
3. I've heard that casting will be song-based from other users. Will this be the only way to cast spells, or will there be more classical methods, a la wands/books/staves/talismans? Does the material used to make such items affect casting functionality? Could a metal casting tool double as a bludgeoning weapon? Will one be able to make dual weapons/casting tools which the user alternates based on distance to target/threat severity?
4. What is the malus to using casting, if any? Is it simply how many times you can use a casting tool/ability per action? Like if it's song-based, the number of mouths on the creature? Or will there be a mana/focus/essence count that depletes as spells are used?
5. Can spells be fired through fortifications or is there a chance the projectile will hit the fortifications as it moves if too large, possibly setting off spell prematurely?
6. Can casting devices be made, a la ballistae or catapults, or even traps?
1. Will mind-affecting spells exist? Includes: Memory-alteration/removal/inclusion, intelligence reduction/increase, raising/lowering the speed at which dwarves become proficient at their craft, and writing curses on walls that compel readers to read the information on them and convey it to others, repeating the curse's effect. Also possibly something inducing berserk states.
1. That seems like a system-dependent question, and you'd have to address what happens if all the bits are scattered around and so forth. Certain types of 'undeath' involve an ostensibly deadish body but the original soul is still in there and it's just sort of a curse. This might be reversible. Others would require the restoration of a desiccated corpse while the soul is also reunited with the body, etc.
2. It really depends on the system it makes. Little flying bolts of magical energy can be a fine thing, ranging from pinpricks to instadeath. Each take on it changes the nature of the world and society to a varying degree. Other worlds won't have that kind of magic; certainly some people will want it turned off.
3. There will be various methods, depending on what it cooks up. Songs are simply on the table as an option, since we have them (along with dance and poetry, etc.) In the current myth generator example, I think it had some material dependent examples. You can whack people with most stuff in DF, so I imagine that tradition will continue.
4. Yeah, it's all on the table. We're hoping to vaguely be able to match casting costs and powers (if desired by setting, which it usually is), but I'm sure there'll be some initial and ongoing spectacular failures there.
5. Hard to say. Arrows currently work that way, so it seems possible.
6. Similarly, as we get more far afield, the less likely something will pop up on the first pass, but we're up for supporting anything that appears in a generic fantasy setting, and magical traps and magical siege weapons are all in there.
1. All of those effects are in our candidate list which the myth generator currently uses (not the wall one specifically, but the idea of controlling actions and forced questing.) It just depends on any implementation stumbling blocks we run into.
Will we have the framework for raiders expanded somewhat while you are working on off site armies? For example, sending provisions/cargo animals for the loot, etc . Or this is going to be developed post magic updates?
It depends; we're really not ready for masses of goods to be moved around, but slightly expanding the volume from tribute/raiding would be fine. I'm not sure what I'll get to.
How will priests, and the role they play in different cultures, intersect with the Myth/Magic update? Will priests have access to some kind of magic or divine powers? Will players be able to become priests?
There are a variety of possibilities depending on the ongoing relationship between people and gods, if they exist. The player should have access to religious powers in both modes if they exist and overlap with the current playable roles (ie, not just restricted to a human ruler from a specific bloodline or whatever.)
Do NPCs in adventure mode ever reflect on their memories when you ask them about their emotional state?
If they are currently reflecting on them, it'll be part of their emotional state, but the question doesn't trigger new thoughts.
What will portals do? Can they be two-way transports to other locations, or a thing that creates new creatures? Can demons emerge from them? Can they appear in fort mode and summon vermin? Can they be summoned manually? How? Lots more questions
PatrikLundell mentioned doing one-way is easier, and will be the starting point, especially if the map rewrite is not done. Once they connect two loaded locations, if they are that sort of portal, then anything should be able to pass through (if allowed by the rules of magic); vermin or dwarves or items or whatever. You get into issues with how projectiles work, since it depends on whether a projectile that enters a tile is also supposed to have entered the portal; in the past, doing things like directions has been hard to display, but some portals will definitely want directions so that for instance magma could pour out of them in a given direction -- then what happens when a creature enters that square from the other side in the non-magma world? Ideally, this would be set by the system, but practically, certain options will be much harder than others to implement, especially where efficient path-finding is involved.
With the myth and magic arc will choosing a demigod adventurer affect the way the game will be played in any new ways?
Like will choosing demigod actually give you specific divine parentage? Of course this would rely on the setting, but could you be given powers based on your parentage?
Or will the demigod setting just be renamed to something else, or simply kept as is with no further affects other than increased attribute and skill points?
We were hoping to get to this at some point, and we'd be in a better position to do it, anyway. At the time, if the demigod setting doesn't make sense for a given world, it'd be renamed or removed, yeah, and generally, there will be whole new options specifically tied to the system created for that world, much like other games' settings, where you might start as a "magma-souled dwarven runecaster" or something sufficiently dwarf-silly, with some exposition as to how that ties into the magic system and legends and society.
When planes are released will the location of hell be able to change in world gen?, and if so will the spires be replaced by portals to the plane of hell?
The planar relationships are determined by the myth. Hell might not even exist in any sense. We do need to consider the various practical game effects of different configurations for fort mode especially, so that digging doesn't become entirely boring, at least in whatever passes for vanilla settings or a vanilla family of settings (not that other settings should be boring, but you should be able to make them boring if you want.)
Is it at all disturbing to implement the system that will allow countless tiny bearded people to remember their traumatic experiences for the rest of their lives?
It hasn't gotten to the point where it truly bothers me, but you do get surprised sometimes and then think a bit, when you see some horrible example. Zach says he doesn't get disturbed by the horrifying events in his own writing, and it's similar, though the procedural aspect can catch you a bit more off-guard.
Will we be able to introduce violence to normally non-violent worlds?
That wouldn't be defined by a single slider at the end of the day I think. The original slider I was thinking of would not allow violent actions, and would try to intercept anything accidentally bad from happening, or outright turn it off as cases come up. On the other hand, a world could be set to have very peaceful myths and generally be a friendly place, but with the originally-mentioned slider set at normal. At that point, it'd be more up to you if you want to be disruptive.
Hey Toady, how often are historical figures pulled from sitepops in worldgen, and in what conditions? For the most part, this question concerns full grown adults being pulled into existence without known lineage, in particular, or is there retroactive lineage generation?
Relating to the first question, what sort of balance do you wish to strike from the following two directions?:
-That frequently pulling adults into existence during worldgen is immersively destructive, due to the sheer amount of individuals who seem to exist with no historical relation to any individuals, and no family to direct the course of their actions in any way.
-That infrequently pulling individuals into existence during worldgen can cause issues in that tightly knit family trees have much more involvement in everything that occurs in the world than anyone else, and that their limited numbers can cause issues if a significant amount of them find vital roles not their calling. That it is also difficult to counter this due to the limitation of the drag on worldgen that excessive historical figures causes.
It happens quite a bit, as far as I can tell. I haven't run metrics on it. If it needs to fill a position, it does it, and I think it also tries to keep 2.5% of a site's population historical, or something like that, so not every story is related to positions of power (though they end up assuming them anyway.) It doesn't try to retroactively generate anything, as this can become a problem of contradictions with all the details floating around, though we've thought about some methods involving population history tracking (so it could at least get the site timings correct and give suddenly elevated people a slight yet consistent backstory.)
Indeed, there is a balance to be struck, and we're trying to land somewhere in the center there. It would be best to have everybody, but we can't do that, so every answer is somewhat unsatisfactory, but I don't like going to either extreme. There's also the issue of geographic imbalance; with the cap, historical figures can end up all on one side of the world, unless we pull them out of thin air evenly from sites throughout the world (the 2.5% bit, which favors the sites which are not already oversaturated.)
About one-way portals, will there be Necromancer-like raids coming out of them? Kinda like “other realm” stuff. It would be intimidating to see a field of portals opening, summoning a creature, and closing.
Yeah, we are looking forward to it, he he he. Naturally it can be a bit frustrating to have your fort instakilled by some magical nonsense, but there's a middleground where things can be interesting and challenging, and perhaps a bit unfair sometimes.
1) With the Myth&Magic system, will we see magical auras? Like the Surrounding system, an area might also be associated with a Myth, and exhibit properties of that Myth. Let's say the Myth generation creates a connection between ice, lizardmen and silver (I will call these spheres), and an area highly aligned with this Myth would be colder, show often snow, ice formations, lizard-like creatures, abundant silver veins, silver colored trees, and in general entities associated with those spheres.
2) Again on this aura concept. Will we see the properties of an area modify the value of its surrounding? E.g. a fortress with a shrine to a God: will the influence of that God increase with the prayers? Will we see anything like of building a fortress in an evil biome and trying to create and expand an aura that opposes the evil biome and having the evil biome effects less strong closer to the church?
Always on this, let's say there's an area with a verdant pine forest and full of bears, and the Myth generation creates a connection between a lightning god, bears and pine trees. Given how the area "looks like" that Myth, will the association of this area with this Myth increase over time, and see the place get more lightning storm, flowers that give you a shock if you eat them, then magical creatures of lightning and so on?
3) I see dwarves being more and more creative, telling stories, playing make believe, now even writing fiction books. Will this be expanded to fairytales? And could very famous fairytales have a concrete effect on the world, and be part of some sort of Myth generation during game time? The idea being that fairies inhabit the world of imagination and a strong believe can summon the fairies to the real world. Sufficient people telling the story of the big bad wolf living in a certain cave, has the effect of actually bringing a big bad fairy wolf to that very cave.
1) Yes, this is quite likely, as we've discussed sphere-oriented regions etc. in the past, and this concept can be extended and related to the myth generator etc. along various axes and to whatever mechanic.
2) This is a system dependent question; magic doesn't always need to be contagious in that way, but it is a legitimate fantasy mechanism, so we'll be trying to support it in the underlying way we do sphere-oriented regions generally, as 'change' is one of our guiding themes, the ability to make an area more or less magical if the system permits it (some magic might be permanent in the system.)
3) This is a specific mechanism, but I'm aware of some settings/RPGs that work this way, so technically this kind of thing is on the table. It's more difficult than the others, though, at least doing it well and getting the frequency and exposition right.
Having said that Now that we are gonna get assasinations and kidnapping missions in all modes, is it the time to make knocking out and dragging unconscious enemies possible?
If it were, will the also upcoming medical stuff in adv. mode include sleep/alertness inducing herbs to poison enemies?
None of these things are strictly necessary (verbal threats would satisfy the minimum requirement), so offering a timeline is difficult. The more stuff the better, but we want to try to cover a breadth of ground on this set of releases.
In regards to conveying information more openly in adventure mode, do you intend making NPCs convey their emotions in more ways than merely stating them? I.e smiling when making a good deal, shrieking in pain when taking damage, or some of the mannerisms that are currently described only in fort mode? Would be fun to encounter the occasional hysterical bandit that loudly screams when lightly tapped. Or the psycho who grins as he/she is getting stabbed.
What about nobles? Would they say what they're nobles of? I often find an issue with various bandit leaders not really stating what they're leaders of, making it hard to tell if they're really relevant enough to bother with, same with other nobles - would be a definite improvement
Non-verbal communication is not a priority right now, but we'd like to do more. Part of it has to do with them not having emotional reactions to many important places where that would matter, like specific statements, but rather to broad dwarf-mode-style situations. So there's some background work that needs doing.
A certain subsection of the question of noble affiliation is villain exposition, which we're going to try to find some time to focus on as we do those plots.
Concerning the more isolated and obscure intelligent species, such as gnomes, pixies, merfolk, satyrs, etc... Will the first pass of the mythgen update have any affect on these specie's organization (roaming tribes, et cetera), and to what extent do you see them attempting any variety of effective and placebo magic?
To what degree do you want a player to be able to direct their scholars to naturalist, druidic magics that can be practiced by these tribes and other tribes (kobolds, animalmen, etc)? Are you looking towards any manner of arbitrary or cultural barrier (through ethics?) to prevent a dwarven fortress from being competent in all worldly magics, or are you content with the dwarves being able to potentially fully develop their knowledge on obscure magics, given the resources?
To my understanding, many rituals will continue to exist in low-myth mode, but clearly not effective, such as priesthood and rituals that work for the mentioned placebo reasons. In higher myth strength worlds, do you see this placebic magic continuing to coexist with functional magical practices between cultures due to incomplete knowledge concerning all worldly magic, or will the effects and proof of magic be overt enough that the standards for believing a type of magic exists end up being raised compared to real life?
We'll want to do some things with the new critters, and this might impact the existing critters, but it's hard to say how far we'll get. Some of it seems more the purview of the customs/property/etc. stuff, but as we've said with divine law, there could be precursors that come up beforehand. Every appropriate traditionally-magical raw creature will be on the table for magical additions according to their raw settings, just in the way dwarves are. So it depends on how much we go in and edit each of those objects, which seems like a good thing to do, and not incredibly difficult once the basic system works.
The myth generator already has some hard barriers (species, bloodline, etc.), and softer barriers are fair as well. I imagine we can get to a setting that makes all magic systems universal if restrictions are bothersome to some people. We're certainly hoping to make things like necromancy more horrifying than they currently are to the average society, and that will hopefully come up in fort mode as well.
Yeah, it's perfectly fine for ineffective systems to be created and persist, even in the face of working systems. However, like you say, evidence of working magic should have some effect on world-view and system adoption rates (or whatever we get to), until the use of proper magic becomes more common. This doesn't mean that people will necessarily give up their old systems; they might persist together, or people might keep them for reasons of tradition while knowing they aren't effective. Ideally. Messing with this will possibly wait until we have some more frameworks for the society in general, but things like "views on <x> magic" are on the table for the first release, and societal change as it concerns magic might also be considered (though societal change is hard without the new culture frameworks from the scenario arc.)
Is there going to be a way to add some kind of deadline to a mission in the next couple of updates? I hear other players having issues with squads wandering around forever.
It depends on the sort of mission. They'll bar-hop for artifacts for some months, but if it's a raid or to do with squads with members stuck in the fort, then we'll address the ones on the tracker at some point. I still have bugs to address for this release, but it depends on what's there and how long they take; there are still crashes for instance.
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Topic: Future of the Fortress (Read 3125829 times)