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[voliol]

I'm starting to feel like I'm upsetting people by asking questions to what is supposed to be a AMA thread.

Specifically, this is a thread "to discuss current developments". The reason I suggested moving the question is that Toady requests it in the top post of this thread, and that the suggestions forum is a better, well, forum for suggestions, both for discussion and future readability.
It was also the addition of another "suggestion-question" that prompted my reply, the clarification of the first question was perfectly fine.

That said, I'm pretty sure all the regulars of this thread has put forth questions blurring the suggestion line, the temptation is simply too sweet to not. Or at least I have, so I am not the one to find faults in others. Sorry for coming off as upset. :/

(psst: for a "truer" AMA, with light suggestions and bug questions allowed, DF Talk is what you seek)

[Nilsolm]

What are the current plans for alchemy? Any chance for some of them to get implemented during the myths & magic arc?

[voliol]

What are the current plans for alchemy? Any chance for some of them to get implemented during the myths & magic arc?

There is a chance, answers to similar questions have implied it's still undecided what will go into the first release, but alchemy is a candidate. I've bolded the most relevant parts for you.

1. In terms of magical crafting in the first pass of the myth and magic update will there be forms of magic crafting that require stationary work areas such as an alchemy lab or run scribing table? If so would an adventurer in those worlds be able to participate in magic crafting if they found one of those work areas or would such crafting be fortress mode only?
[...]

PatrikLundell said "It's probably too early to say what will and what will not appear in the *first* Myth & Magic arc," and I'd like to emphasize that; for many questions, I'm just not going to be able to provide a timeline, though we've committed to certain bits or themes for the first pass.

1. On the one hand, adventurers can't use most workshops and the most industrialized magic forms might end up falling into this pattern.  However, on the other, we'd be pretty invested in having adventurer involvement throughout here.
[...]

Do you think dynamic combination of magic will be possible with magic, an example being mixing water and fire magic on the fly to create steam or fire and earth to create magma or would such combinations need to be predefined?

Something needs to be defined somewhere; what the atoms are is up to the system.  If we rely on chemistry etc. out in the typical game mechanics, we'll have the things we current have (magma and water produces steam and obsidian etc), plus anything that is explicitly added.  If the system uses predefined conceptual nodes, like the spheres, then they can hop around the friend/parent/child/opposition relationships they have, and spell effects might be related to that.  So, as a potential example, a light effect might miscast into a (generated) sun effect, which could be very bad -- I'm not sure what we'll have in this first pass, but this is the sort of thing that should be natural for it to do, as sphere-effect coverage grows.  There's also a cross-over zone with stuff like the "sphere" regions; if a region is interacted with and its attached symbols change, then its properties might shift dynamically.

We don't currently have a (possibly generated?) sphere/concept math, like <sphere:earth> + <sphere:water> =e.g.= <sphere:muck>, but this sort of thing is possible and might come in with alchemy.  There are various ways this can be done, and we've toyed around with a few of them in side projects.  Not all ~120 spheres need to be represented; it could pick, say, 8 sufficiently "far apart" spheres at random, and then use whatever mixing system and generic sphere-effect generators to handle situations, with coverage and possibilities being increased as we add effects and conceptual linkages.

My anticipation now is that we'll have some of this to start, a few classes of generated system with this kind of behavior, and then it will improve and broaden over time.

[...]
9. Will certain symbols become recurring and socially relevant? (ex: in various ancient real-life cultures, horns are considered a sign of power, and some speculate that crowns symbolically replicate them)
[...]

[...]
9. We have entity symbols now, they just aren't done well and don't feed into a larger symbolism.  Magic symbolism will probably come in before cultural symbolism, just because of the release order and the likelihood that e.g. any form of 'alchemy' or 'potion-making' will require that sort of thing.
[...]

[Nilsolm]

Thanks! I wasn't really expecting any definitive answer to the second questions. I am mostly interested in the first one since all I've seen so far were little snippets like those. I am curious about how alchemy would work as a whole, whether there will be procedural recipes etc.

[Iä! RIAKTOR!]

I know big part of comminity that like to play with funny bugs, like catsplosion. Why you don't release 'unstable' version of Villains update with buggy ghosts?

[delphonso]

I know big part of comminity that like to play with funny bugs, like catsplosion. Why you don't release 'unstable' version of Villains update with buggy ghosts?

I think most of us enjoy bugs only in so far as they are funny. Babies playing horsie to death was hilarious, but also made fortress mode pretty terrible. Catsplosion is a fun story but was also FPS death for a lot of forts.

[Shonai_Dweller]

I know big part of comminity that like to play with funny bugs, like catsplosion. Why you don't release 'unstable' version of Villains update with buggy ghosts?

Current version of the game has buggy ghosts. That's why he couldn't make the intelligent undead versions. As fun as it all is, no-one makes bugs on purpose.

[Eric Blank]

Crashes are not fun.

[Ekaton]

Would you consider using professional impact analysis for different types of weapons to adjust the way armour and shield works in DF? A good example of a decent analysis of how shields work against arrows can be found here: https://youtu.be/y6IlEUm_Eo4 This channel has quite a lot of different tests, using different weapons and types of armour. I thought it might be useful.

[green_meklar]

Regarding the myth/magic content, will the AI respond preemptively to foreknown world events? For instance, if a given region is going to shift to become a demonic hellscape when the planets align, and the date (and implications) of this alignment are common knowledge in that world, one would expect nearby civilizations to evacuate the area as the date approaches; if an immortal being's lover is cursed to sleep for 700 years, then as the curse nears its end that being might choose to return to the tomb where their lover sleeps in order to meet them when they awaken; and so on for a variety of other prophecies, curses and such where important magical events or changes in the world are knowable in advance. Is this sort of preemptive action on the part of ingame beings or civilizations planned for the myth/magic content, or even feasible to implement?

[PatrikLundell]

@green_meklar: I doubt there is any detailed planning at this stage, but this kind of behavior is logical and makes sense in the game, so there is no reason to assume it's been decided to not be at least attempted. When that would happen is a different question, though: it might well be long after the catastrophes themselves have been introduced. I don't see that it would be impossible to take known future events into effect, but there probably isn't a simple solution either, but logic to be introduced for each kind of situation (known shortage of beer and of plump helmets could presumably use a common "known future shortage" logic, but logic to evacuate an area to get away from any kind of catastrophic event would probably be separate from it, as would the logic to flock to an area either peacefully (worshipers greeting a god) or hostile (military meeting an invasion/hostile godlike entity).

[Eric Blank]

Its not unfeasible given the refugee code for fleeing sites subject to invasions already works, but that code needs to be updated as they often just camp outside the site permanently, at least in adventure mode. They'll just have to think about things before they happen based on rumors.

[Su]

Regarding the myth/magic content, will the AI respond preemptively to foreknown world events? For instance, if a given region is going to shift to become a demonic hellscape when the planets align, and the date (and implications) of this alignment are common knowledge in that world, one would expect nearby civilizations to evacuate the area as the date approaches; if an immortal being's lover is cursed to sleep for 700 years, then as the curse nears its end that being might choose to return to the tomb where their lover sleeps in order to meet them when they awaken; and so on for a variety of other prophecies, curses and such where important magical events or changes in the world are knowable in advance. Is this sort of preemptive action on the part of ingame beings or civilizations planned for the myth/magic content, or even feasible to implement?

the immortal lovers one i would hope to see, but it's a quite common thing in fiction and myth for there to be widespread denial regarding apocalyptic events. think majora's mask with everyone refusing to leave despite the moon being *right there*, or lot and his family being the only ones to leave sodom.

in fact, it turns out this even happens in real life too - look at the awful response by our governments to the climate crisis, or the pandemic for a more immediate example: continual denial and then downplaying when it gets too big a problem to ignore.

[voliol]

Regarding the myth/magic content, will the AI respond preemptively to foreknown world events? For instance, if a given region is going to shift to become a demonic hellscape when the planets align, and the date (and implications) of this alignment are common knowledge in that world, one would expect nearby civilizations to evacuate the area as the date approaches; if an immortal being's lover is cursed to sleep for 700 years, then as the curse nears its end that being might choose to return to the tomb where their lover sleeps in order to meet them when they awaken; and so on for a variety of other prophecies, curses and such where important magical events or changes in the world are knowable in advance. Is this sort of preemptive action on the part of ingame beings or civilizations planned for the myth/magic content, or even feasible to implement?

On that topic, how much does the AI currently care about future events? I know we have refugees, but those evacuate after the site is attacked, afaik.
The new (villainous) agents make up plans and conspiracies of their own, but how appropriately do they react to other actor’s plans if they know about them, especially ones they cannot stop? Like if a quester leaked their plan to steal an artifact from a dragon, could rival questers/quest-givers cancel their plans to do the same, instead opting for an ambush?

[Silverwing235]

Regarding the myth/magic content, will the AI respond preemptively to foreknown world events? For instance, if a given region is going to shift to become a demonic hellscape when the planets align, and the date (and implications) of this alignment are common knowledge in that world, one would expect nearby civilizations to evacuate the area as the date approaches; if an immortal being's lover is cursed to sleep for 700 years, then as the curse nears its end that being might choose to return to the tomb where their lover sleeps in order to meet them when they awaken; and so on for a variety of other prophecies, curses and such where important magical events or changes in the world are knowable in advance. Is this sort of preemptive action on the part of ingame beings or civilizations planned for the myth/magic content, or even feasible to implement?

On that topic, how much does the AI currently care about future events? I know we have refugees, but those evacuate after the site is attacked, afaik.
The new (villainous) agents make up plans and conspiracies of their own, but how appropriately do they react to other actor’s plans if they know about them, especially ones they cannot stop? Like if a quester leaked their plan to steal an artifact from a dragon, could rival questers/quest-givers cancel their plans to do the same, instead opting for an ambush?

I put in some boldface to indicate what looks to be a screwup, if you wouldn't mind...