Do you feel concerned/worried by the collapse in forum's activity ? (activity divided by 3 - 6 in 7 years depending on what you are looking at)
voliol:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8284523#msg8284523Inarius (op):
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8284539#msg8284539Shonai_Dweller:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8284545#msg8284545clinodev:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8284815#msg8284815Inarius (op):
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8285142#msg8285142Yeah, not particular worried, for the reasons mentioned, and the game itself is still being played, ha ha, as far as I can tell.
Is it true that the leftwards and rightwards triangle will be used as delimiters for magical items?
It used to be that way, in the few effects we had on artifacts before the initial release. The next introduction of magic will be more complicated, and the symbols might end up getting that way too, but it seems fine to do it the old way if it's sufficient.
Are there any plans regarding simple terraforming, i.e. filling up single tiles with dirt or being able to rebuild ramps? If so, do you have an idea where it fits in the timeline?
PatrikLundell:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8285141#msg8285141PatrikLundell's answer about covers it!
Are the changes for steam release fully compatible with macros? Are there any future plans for the macro feature or is it considered finished?
I haven't changed how it works, and I don't currently expect any issues, once we have keyboard support back up in places. The notion of cursors feels a bit odd - most people won't want to see them most places, and I'm not sure if that'll be enabled through some option or what yet, but once it is, it should be compatible with macros. I haven't planned new stuff for it at this point.
Aside from being technically ambitious task, have you considered what gameplay purpose will Myth and Magic serve? As a player, would it make a considerable difference for me to play a procgen race with procgen magic system as opposed to playing the hardcoded one?
PatrikLundell:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8285853#msg8285853voliol:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8285934#msg8285934I suppose it depends on what you mean by gameplay? I mean, I think for most definitions there'll be a considerable difference, especially since the hardcoded dwarves don't have any magic at all currently, nor do their gods do anything besides cursing vandals (in fort mode), nor do what little myths they have mean anything at all. So strictly mechanically speaking, the shape of the game challenges and approaches should be pretty different from world to world. If we allow emergent narrative and player story formation under the umbrella of gameplay, then I think it's even more clear. If by hardcoded, you're talking about a version that includes myths and magic of some expanded form, then it depends on how complicated the hardcoded stuff is, but it sort of loops back around to the same thing.
1. Even if multistory siege weapons are off the table, what sort of siege machines might be available, and how moddable will that whole system be? Will it be possible to create entirely custom siege weapons/ammunition for example? Would that extend to wagons?
2. Will the steam version of the game have an option to play the game in ascii, or will it be required to use the graphics pack?
3. Some mods come with the actual game's .exe for ease of installation, effectively functioning as an "independent" game you can install like the default one, how would mods like that function on the steam workshop if at all?
4. Will container items like backpacks and quivers become moddable before or after the Big Wait?
5. Will stuff like armor and weapons eventually become as granular as instruments? Maybe not in the near future, but at some point?
6. I believe it was discussed before that "normal" DF wouldn't feature technology past a certain level, but what sort of anachronisms do you think might be added as potential tools for NPCs to discover/develop?
7. What traits influence the odds of an NPC becoming an "adventurer" ie warrior/mercenary/monster slayer in worldgen? Violence and excitement-seeking maybe, but is there anything else?
Bumber:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8285979#msg8285979PatrikLundell:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8285983#msg8285983clinodev:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8286091#msg8286091PatrikLundell:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8286119#msg82861191. For the army release? I'm not sure that'll be the focus in the end, since they are pretty useless against the fort, and the whole moving fortress/trap improvement thing is more of a map topic. First we'll need to make the attacking armies more effective before giving new ways to kill them ha ha. But we'll see. When I'm actually working on making attacking armies more effective, a few extra things might happen.
2. There'll be a Classic branch, I think, at the minimum - this separation may be required by Steam due to how the Classic game will be distributed on Bay 12, though I'm not sure on the particulars. Doing a switch on-the-fly in the default game would also be cool, and doesn't feel super hard, but it's an extra step. It does just tie into all the mod support stuff though.
3. I have no idea how that sort of thing works on workshop, or what workshop is capable of in terms of overwriting/changing files. But yeah, if I'm limited to a mod folder they'll have to operate through Classic or through some sort of local files fiddling.
4. It hasn't been on my radar!
5. That was the plan, yeah, for most items, to have components based on material and functional differences. No idea how that's going to go timelinewise.
6. It's a cutoff, so there weren't really plans for anachronisms except by accident. However, magic does tend to give rise to analogues to future stuff, when we think to support it, and I imagine that'll grow slowly with the various effects.
7. I think in world gen, this might predate them having full personalities, some of them -- we can only track those for a portion of the historical figures for data reasons. If they are an unimportant mercenary and survive worldgen to get a fully realized character for play, it puts their personality on based on that. Spies and merchants get curiosity bonuses, while hunters get excitement bonuses, and monster hunters/snatcher/thieves/mercenaries get both. I think the reason for that odd choice of facets was related to getting them to join you as a player adventurer.
Regarding development, is there an order of things planned before the Big Waittm? Can we expect adventure mode intrigues to be expanded and finished before the Big Waittm?
Shonai_Dweller:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8286008#msg8286008Yeah, Shonai_Dweller's correct, and the villain section mentioned in their reply includes the adventure mode intrigue stuff.
Just wondering if you've given any thought to what a tutorial might look like for Steam. Any notes or simply 'thinking out loud' ideas?
PatrikLundell:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8287074#msg8287074Shonai_Dweller:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8287076#msg8287076Yeah, it hasn't changed much since the link in Shonai_Dweller's reply, since it makes sense to have the UI more or less in place before trying to tutorialize it, but we have been leaning more toward in game guides/tutorialish goals that work for a regular fort rather than strict separate tutorial maps. So if you want them, it can have a few basic tips about getting mining and bedrooms and things started, and then a few more that pop up if the fort is getting booze-deficient, or if you've mined your first gems, and so on. I remember reading a post-mortem for Stellaris along these lines that made some sense to me there. But it's hard to do! The context sensitive detection stuff can get really messy. But it's better than having a separate tutorial scenario that falls apart because there are too many moving parts, or which doesn't connect to a playable world even if the player has gotten attached to the fort.
Do you have any way to protect the steam version of dwarf fortress from piracy? I assume that virtually all the game files from the normal, ascii version, stay on the steam version, but with new ui and tileset files; creative modders could try to integrate the stuff from steam version into the ascii version for free using someone else's copy of the game; does the steam version require steam to play, or you can just copy the files from your steam copy to share with other people, like with older games released on steam, where steam is just the "bootloader"?
Shonai_Dweller:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8287241#msg8287241PatrikLundell:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8287291#msg8287291Yeah, we aren't going to try anything draconian, since it all gets cracked anyway. People like having games on Steam, and that's probably enough to keep us going.
Toady, any plans for sorting options in the new Trade Screen? Especially sorting by item value could be very useful.
I just added a little sort button that I used in the new version of the units screen, which should be up on the Steam news around the time this gets posted - so there's some hope of that getting back around to places.
1. Will the map rewrite make it possible for tiles to stop being considered "on the surface/outdoors" forever if exposed once to the sky?
2. Will it be possible to engrave each side of a wall separately?
3. There are plans for siegers (presumably ones armed with mining tools) to be able to dig through tiles, but will some strong and/or big creatures/monsters be able to dig through tiles and smash through constructions without the use of tools?
4. What sort of limits if any (other than the obvious "no digging through adamantine/slade"), do you imagine instituting for digging siegers (or monsters) for balance purposes?
5. Different places in the real world have different durations of seasons (and in the southern hemisphere they are in reverse order), and AFAIK some places don't experience the familiar 4 seasons but instead have a different set, is this something that is planned eventually? Similar question goes for durations of day and night depending on location.
6. Speaking of seasons (and day/night cycles), does the "list of things to have in the game one day" include more bizarre/random/high magic worlds taking into account different astronomy (amount of suns etc), and maybe even some "magic cycles" that happen alongside (or sometimes replace) natural cycles like seasons and day/night, with their own effects?
7. You've said something about playing as procgen races in fort mode even in the first myth&magic update, provided they tick off a certain number of fort mode necessities (including digging), as some features aren't where they need to be yet (such as above-ground constructions for non-digging civilizations). Other than the digging, are there any other requirements you can think of off the top of your head, or is it pretty much just digging?
8. Right now creatures like hydras and ettins have 1 mind for all heads, and I think you've said you plan to support 1 mind per head, but would that apply to all kinds of multi-headed creature, or would some species and/or creatures have it one way and others the other way?
9a. Are "animated statues and figurines" planned? That is, magic that turns an arbitrary statue/figurine into a bronze-colossus-like creature made of "whatever the statue/figurine was made of", with the anatomy/body shape of the thing the statue is depicting, at the appropriate size of the statue/figurines representation of that thing. The dev notes mention automatons, but I'm not sure if that's quite the same thing (magic automatons are usually custom built to be automatons and aren't fully solid).
9b. A similar question goes for art/engravings (like an engraving of a troll just coming off of the wall, leaving the wall bare).
10. Will bronze colossi ever turn into statues of themselves upon death instead of the statue having a random subject, or is there some other plan in mind for them?
11. How do you think mind reading and/or short-term clairvoyance by reading intentions would work (assuming it's planned)? Wondering particularly about your thoughts on NPC's trying to read the mind/intentions of a player's adventurer.
12. Is it planned for creatures to be able to be eaten or swallowed whole by much larger ones? Like a dwarf being eaten by a dragon or other large enough beast, and maybe being rescuable if you get them out before they suffocate or get digested.
13. What about creatures fighting differently depending on the size and position of their opponent (kind of related to the above question I guess)? By this I mean something like a bronze colossus happily punching, wrestling and headbutting other massive beasts, but preferring to stomp on or kick puny dwarves, unless the dwarves are on a ledge or something and therefore easier to reach with the arms.
14. Regarding creature sizes, will it always be the case that their size is modeled only with volume? Apart from when they're real life creatures or just assumed to be of human proportions, it's often ambiguous whether something is meant to be tall and skinny, or wide and bulky, or really long.
15. The images shown for Steam with the new trade depo seem to imply that wagons no longer overlap with the depo, how does that work now? Will more space be necessary to have a functioning trade depo?
16. Many screens will now apparently no longer pause the game when brought up; will it be possible to set in a menu to pause automatically when opening these?
17. Which screens/interfaces/functionality still remain to be completed for Fortress mode in the Premium update?
18. If the Steam release does well enough to accommodate it, would you consider hiring someone more experienced with optimization to help with that during the map rewrite? Or maybe bringing on volunteers (under NDA of course).
19. With the big map rewrite coming up, is threading or even GPU acceleration (like OpenCL, or whatever its successor is) that something you might try to implement in there, or at least architect the new code with potential for it in mind (so if you decide in the future that it's necessary, it wouldn't require another big rewrite)? Especially if you have help from someone more knowledgeable about threading (and GPU acceleration). In particular, I'm asking about pathfinding, temperatures, and liquid flow, as while I may be mistaken, "map rewrite" sounds like it involves rewriting those to an extent, and they happen to be some of the biggest FPS users.
clinodev:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8288408#msg8288408PatrikLundell:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8288415#msg8288415voliol:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8288418#msg8288418Mr_Crabman (op):
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8288437#msg8288437DwarfStar:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8288484#msg8288484Mr_Crabman (op):
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8288514#msg8288514DwarfStar:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8288549#msg8288549Schmaven:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8288573#msg828857319 questions (actually 36 or something counting the other posts and subparts etc.) is a lot! Please try to narrow to your favorites. You've asked about as much as everybody else combined this month.
The replies covered 1, 2, 13, 18, 19, closely enough anyway.
3. It's possible. Big creatures are sometimes the least interesting attacks because they just end up milling around.
4. It's not clear yet, but they should likely be slower and not omniscient -- it would be cool if they could dig in an informed fashion, but without knowing where everything is.
5. We already have this nominally with the wet/dry season, etc. Though it isn't really respected that well, or interesting.
6. Yep.
7. There are things like not setting everything on fire and etc. that'll probably cause issues until the game understands which materials and environments people would prefer to live in. Short life spans may also be bad, or weird ways of coming into the world.
8. Could certainly support both ways. Some argue with themselves more than others traditionally I think.
9a. It has come up! To have a creature be the same shape as another but use different materials takes a bit of doing, but that's just the kind of thing we're hoping to support more generally, for different situations.
9b. There are lots of variations on the theme of course. I don't recall if this specifically has come up, but it's well into suggestions territory at that point!
10. It just hasn't been super important - the size/shape is all wrong of course, but linking up stuff like that in the txt files is a pain, especially in isolation.
11. Ha ha, yeah, reading the player's mind is quite difficult! Stuff can be managed through either really short-term stuff like combat action prediction, or by giving abstract minuses to conversations/lie attempts etc. They could also dip into goals you've given your subordinates, and other information like that which you'd have to know, though of course that can get complicated.
12. Have considered this because it is in NetHack ha ha. We also had it for a monster in Dragslay if I recollect, but it was easier there. Guess it'd be a new form of inventory or wrestling, though we just haven't gotten into it.
14. It would be nice, but it's tricky, and of dubious value, until it's not, which has come up a few times as I recollect.
15. They don't need more space in a sense because you've always had to have a route for wagons to roll up to the depot. But you can't have a drawbridge right there next to it now.
16. That's a reasonable suggestion.
17. I think your list pretty much covers it! The spritework item there covers a lot of course. I also need to do some more item/unit/building view tab work as the information hub comes together - most of the unit sheet tabs are empty right now because we haven't done the relevant sections of the info hub.
I just remembered there was a blind DF player on the forum a couple of years back. How will the change to tiles for the character set affect the ability to translate the display into sound? Has any thought gone into that, and, if so, has any support been thought of?
voliol:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8289033#msg8289033PatrikLundell:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8289070#msg8289070While the addition of graphical tiles has accessibility benefits for a lot of people, I don't think it would help the player in question. Tiles are more complicated than CP437 characters of course. Classic should operate on a single grid, in any case, so there's still some hope of having that be readable.
I've been looking through the disassembly of a function that returns a plant at an x, y, z coordinate. (Looks like it's called by tree chopping and rendering code, among others.)
It looks like it checks if ((x / 48) * 48) < 0 || ((x / 48) * 48) >= map_size_in_x_tiles. (It might also be (x - x%48) in your code.)
This check will succeed for values of x as low as -47. Same for the y check. The checks should probably be using the regular x and y coordinates.
There's a check inside a loop that will reject any index that would be outside of the array of a tree struct, though an incorrect result (instead of NULL) could be returned if the value ((tree_dim_x / 2) - plant_x%48) + x%48) is somehow >= 0 and < tree_dim_x for a tree. This is all dependent on a negative value somehow being passed to the function, of course.
I think I found the one. Generally it won't get negative values since it's being fed tile coordinates, though it would be wiser to not assume that, yeah.
Do you have any plans to do something like procedurally generated languages/conlangs?
If so, what extent would this be going to/how far indepth would this be? Like, evolving/splitting over time between cultures, partial merging via loanwords or 2 cultures being in close proximity all the time, creatures not understanding some languages but "translators" or well-traveled ones being multi-lingual?
And for the contents of the languages themselves, would generating them involve low level details to make them seem natural/not generated, like this?:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Just wondering how far this would go (if this stuff isn't planned already I'll definitely post a suggestion for it, along with some links to good sources people use for making conlangs).
voliol:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8289168#msg8289168I studied linguistics for a few years in college and have at least one conlang book I remember. It's always been on the radar, before DF was even a thing, and I've wanted to go as deep as I can, as usual, ha ha. But it has never felt like the right time. Along with the procedural games and a few other things, where there has been a lot of prep but little actual movement. But hopefully one day it'll come along.
You've mentioned plans for the siege rework before the big wait including ways for invaders to get through walls, like digging or breaking them down. Are there similar plans to make monsters like Giants or FBs have similar capability?
I've always wanted to make them more troublesome, though they do have a lot more gravity with the myth/magic stuff than normal sieges do. But fun things may happen. It is possible. Generally, the large monsters should be able to do larger things. Just squishing entire bodies, or even groups of dwarves all at once. Squish.
1. Might be a Dumb question, but are pebbles only able to be formed from the specific materials listed in the stone layers or can pebbles be of any material so long as its stone? (I.E native copper, cinnabar, pyrite)
2. Regarding custom made companions:
A. Are companions created from the starting screen considered a separate faction or something? Im wondering because they're loyal to you specifically and will even turn on other companions if you attack them.
B. Also what do the "Respects you" "Highly Loyal" and "Loves You" traits do to your companions and how they act?
3. How wide is the scope of pets that can be spawned by divination dice? Because I've had pets spawn that weren't even Tameable creatures. Is it any creatures with the Large creature tag? Could i theoretically roll until i get a Night Creature or Angel as a pet?
1. Looks like they can be placed on any surface randomly as it's making the local tile map, from the top layer rock.
2A/B. They don't get a named faction, but everybody gets comrade links with everybody else, and maxed love/loyalty/respect/trust. At some point, it'll be fun to support more complicated dynamics in the initial group perhaps. There's also an explicit companion agreement that is formed with the reason "for adventure". I'm not sure between all of this what's governing the behavior in combat. Lots of the love/loyalty/etc. stuff is half-baked because it was part of the villain release which we had to delay.
3. Large predator, natural animal. Just in case, small creatures are forbidden. Also forbidden: cannot breathe air, immobile land, can learn, megabeast, semimegabeast, titan, demon, unique demon, supernatural.
Have you considered enabling autosave and backups by default on the Steam version?
Relevant thread:
https://www.reddit.com/r/dwarffortress/comments/o4ob7q/ive_done_it_again_i_forgot_to_turn_autosaves_on/
Mr_Crabman:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8289586#msg8289586leastannoyingman (op):
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8289588#msg8289588I'm not sure. Autosave doesn't feel super user friendly currently, because the save times and save sizes can get pretty extreme, especially for larger older worlds, and that's not something I can easily combat other than to encourage people to make smaller shorter worlds.
1. For various syndrome tokens, I see in a lot of mods people create, that arguments/tags like `ABRUPT` and `PEAK`, and even `SIZE_DILUTES` are used, even in places where it doesn't appear to make intuitive sense, like `CE_ADD_TAG` for example, since it doesn't seem possible for the intensity of something like that to vary over time (and therefore to have a "peak", or to start "abruptly", or be "diluted by size").
Would these actually work in these cases (and if so, what do they do?), or is it just a matter of them being ignored by the token parser? Another way of asking I guess, is which of these "special" creature effect syndrome tokens actually make use of `ABRUPT`, `PEAK`, and `SIZE_DILUTES` (and for that matter, `SEV`)?: https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Syndrome#Special_Effects
2. How would you handle the possibility/risk of making Steam achievements that later become obsolete or nonsensical/impossible to achieve due to design/mechanical changes in updates?
3. Do you think that, if the Bay12 forums become very saturated with new players, it may become a problem to continue FotF as you do now, and to handle reading the Suggestions forum? If so, what solutions would you have in mind? (for example, for suggestions might you make more subforums for different types of suggestion?)
4. Why are there only mammal and reptile werebeasts? Was this a design decision, or just about not having time or interest to manually hardcode loads of bird and insect werebeasts and instead waiting for them to be generatable?
5. How do you manage doing bugfix updates/patches for current versions, while still working on large changes that are not ready to be released to the public (that is, getting the bugfixes/patches in both the release, and in the unreleased version)? I only ask because I wonder how that's possible to practically manage without using a version control system or branches (assuming that hasn't changed).
6. Related to the last thing, how do you keep track of what changes you have made to the codebase and to features?
7. What happens when the raw parser encounters a "creature level" token (like `BIOME` or `MEGABEAST`) inside a `CASTE` or `SELECT_CASTE`? Does it return back to parsing at the creature level and "cancel" the parsing of that caste? Or does it just ignore that token and keep moving on like it wasn't there? Or does it parse that token at the creature level and then immediately return back to the original caste?
What is it that happens? I don't seem to be seeing any errorlogs or crashes when I test this, so I'm guessing it has some kind of "graceful" solution other than crashing, but I'd like to know what it is, as I'm working with someone else on a language server for raw files (error underlining, autocomplete etc etc), and need to know what to do when these tokens when they are entered (like if they should be marked with a code warning for instance).
FantasticDorf:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8289839#msg82898391. They are just ignored when they don't come up. The level is used by pain, swelling, bleeding, bruising, close wounds, heal tissue, blister, numbness, paralysis, fever, nausea, unconsciousness, necrosis, impair function, drowsiness, dizziness, feel emotion, and erratic behavior, as well as the "reduce" effect associated to some of the ones in that list. Whether the level matters in some of these is probably a question, but it'll take too long to check now.
2. I'm not sure what their policy is. I'm assuming it has happened with other games. If the game has changed that much, I don't have a problem marking something as obsolete or deleting it, depending on how Steam works, but it's more up to them.
3. I'm sure it'll be an issue! If we get like a thousand new people, I'm not even sure the forum itself will still function. There are going to be some growing pains if things go well. Once we emerge from the dust cloud, we may very well have to moderate how questions are selected, or diversify the process so we can cover questions that are both popular while keeping some of the other sorts which can end up being more informative. If we do end up at a point where there are too many suggestions to read, subdivisions won't help that much I expect. It would have to be delegated somehow, which isn't ideal, but if there's that much there, it's unavoidable.
4. It was a design decision, and I expect the sort of thing that'll be impacted by whatever weirdness/deviation-from-genre-norms settings we end up with.
5. None of the changes were that extreme, and none of the code really touched the other code, so it wasn't too tricky. Certainly if it were any more complicated, it's getting into version control territory, and I'll probably have to get into that once we start maintaining the stable branch during the Big Wait.
6. It doesn't come up that often. I just have backups that I might have to look at once a year or less, which has been sufficient.
7. You should be getting a Caste Selection Fails error if you feed gibberish into SELECT_CASTE. If you feed any string into CASTE it'll just make a new caste with that token.
Given that adventurers are asexual, shouldn’t unicorns be friendly towards them?
Putnam:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8289997#msg8289997Shonai_Dweller:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8290044#msg8290044FantasticDorf:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8290063#msg8290063Ha ha, not much to add to the replies, though possibly this was a NetHack joke as well. It has been too long since I've played. Not sure which sort of unicorns we'll get, but we do plan for adventurers to get a bit more involved later.
Is it intentional that elven visitors almost exclusively are members of performance troupes (or villains)? Is it something in elven culture that causes its members to join troupes rather than strike out on their own (and thus sometimes be available for recruitment, as performance troupe recruitment is bugged)?
Edit: In response to Shonai_Dweller's post below: The bug report is https://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=11001, although the actual question is about why elves are almost exclusive to performance troupes. The fact that they're bugged was added as context for why I even care. I expect bugs to be fixed when they get fixed, not when Toady gets bugged about them.
Elves have WANDERER and SCOUT, where dwarves/humans have WANDER, BEAST_HUNTER, SCOUT, and MERCENARY. That impacts the overall frequencies - the artists get selected from the same pool as heroes/snatchers/merchants/etc. when it is looking for those sorts of people.
Will we ever be able to destroy artifacts? This could be useful for some more world events eg destroying a holy relic will cause the adventurer or fortress to be excommunicated, destroying a demon slab could banish them or make the goblins turn on their ruler, a slab with life and death being broken could cause those who read from it to die from a curse/lose their undead
This actually came up in smallhands recently over in community fort. For story reasons I was trying to dispose of a slab. I ended up having to dig a room and drop the room into magma to throw the slab into it and even then its not gone, only "hidden" until reclaim/adventure mode
FantasticDorf:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8291152#msg8291152voliol:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8291161#msg8291161PatrikLundell:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8291262#msg8291262Bumber:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8291300#msg8291300recon1o6 (op):
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8291381#msg8291381The weird permanence of artifacts is an ancient property of the game dating back to when we thought adventure mode was going to be about finding objects and making a high score list. It'll probably just get scrapped entirely at some point (respecting whatever weird magical permanence may come up in-universe.)
How are you and Zach holding up to the heatwave? I hope you and all the pets are ok.
We made it! It wasn't fun though, ha ha ha.
What exactly is a WORSHIP_HF token? i noticed it appear in speech raws dialogue for temples when describing the inhouse patron god of a temple when being accepted into it (though i've never actually played a temple induction myself, usually there's nobody around to talk to, to take a quest from) and a few select interesting nuggets about it being connected to demon-leaders/diplomats/trade-liason foolery when used for position-code mainly based on past versions and a little bit of present version tinkering.
I mean what i *think* i've got from my results so far is that its meant to be any sort of dedicated role for gods/pretenders, but its hard to tell because only the vaguest fringes of it is editable from entity_default on a dark-fortress which has the criteria of a living physical "pretender".
Putnam:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8291751#msg8291751I only see it in reference to the speech stuff, where it just pulls a random worship target of an entity. I'm not sure where it comes up in position code, since it's not an easy search.
1. How do `APPLY_CREATURE_VARIATION` args work? Like, can they be of any type? (I ask because the vanilla raws only seem to use integers, and I've not seen any mods bucking this trend).
2. How many args can be given/used in `APPLY_CREATURE_VARIATION`? `BODY_DETAIL_PLANS` only take a maximum of 5 it seems, so I was wondering if these also have a hardcoded limit (I can tell it's at least 6, but might be more).
3. Also, about the special `|` character being used to separate arguments in `APPLY_CREATURE_VARIATION` so that one `!ARG` can represent multiple arguments, can there be more than 2 arguments in this way, and if so, is there a maximum or is it arbitrary? Such as `5|0|8`?
4. How does `CTAG` and it's conditional behavior on a single token interact with the above `|` behavior? Can it only work if `!ARG1` is not actually multiple arguments, or would it just pick the first one out of the bunch?
5. About `BODY_DETAIL_PLAN` objects and giving "coverage" for some relations, I've also seen coverages given for positions, and sometimes I see coverages given and other times I don't (even for relations like `BELOW`); which relations/positions actually require a coverage value, and do any take it optionally? What's the situation there with layer coverages?
6. In the `BODY_DETAIL_PLAN` token `BP_LAYERS`, apparently you can only define 5 "ARG" tokens (ie up to `ARG5`), but you can also mix in specific tissues like so:
[BP_LAYERS:BY_CATEGORY:HORN:ARG4:2:HORN:2]
My question is, can you add more than 5 tissues using `BP_LAYERS`, if in addition to the `ARG1`-`ARG5` tissues, you also add in other specific tissues? Or is it hardcoded to 5 tissues maximum even then? Like, would something like this be possible?:
[BP_LAYERS:BY_CATEGORY:HORN:ARG5:2:HEART:2:ARG4:2:EYE:2:ARG3:2:HORN:2:ARG2:2:ARG1:2]
7. About the "thickness" of each tissue (the number given after each tissue argument); is this relative or absolute, and how high can it go? I get the impression from the numbers that it's a percentage (ie a percentage of how much that tissue takes up of that body part), but I'm unsure, because it doesn't always add up to 100:
[BP_LAYERS:BY_CATEGORY:TUSK:IVORY:100]
[BP_LAYERS:BY_CATEGORY:NOSE:ARG5:4:ARG1:1]
8. Can you define the same tissue more than one time in a single `BP_LAYERS`? Like this:
[BP_LAYERS:BY_CATEGORY:HORN:ARG4:2:HORN:2:ARG4]
9. In the `TISSUE_LAYER` token in some creature tokens, you see the likes of:
[TISSUE_LAYER:BY_CATEGORY:HEAD:HAIR:NORMAL]]
What is the "NORMAL"? Usually in that place there's a position or relation token, but I have no idea what to make of this one/what it means.
1. It looks like it's just doing string find-replaces, and the arguments are stored as strings, so anything should work, but I have no idea how that may go wrong.
2. Yeah, I only implemented ARG1 through ARG5 because I was being lazy or rushed way back whenever, but the loader of arguments can keep pulling them in.
3/4. Looks like it loops through the entire argument string and converts them all. This conversion happens very early, before the arguments are sent into the variation. So I'm assuming CTAG comparisons won't work if they have |, since the argument will have : by the time it checks.
5. There's a lot going on there and some examples would help me check more quickly.
6. Looks like it'll loop through 1000 times, or until there's nothing left to grab.
7. It's called relative tissue thickness in the code. It probably computes a sum, but I can't quickly check beyond the txt parser.
8. It doesn't check against it. I'm not sure if anything bad happens.
9. Normal just skips the same was as none does. Could be an old compatibility thing? No idea.
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Topic: Future of the Fortress (Read 3135783 times)