Are there currently any plans to add more music tracks to Dwarf Fortress? If yes, then specifically, are there any plans to port more of Simon Swerwer's DF-inspired music from the SoundSense days? I know we got Koganusan and some tracks that sound like spiritual successors to his music, but his tracks really are the music of Dwarf Fortress for me, and as much as I love the new tracks (ESPECIALLY Vile Force of Darkness), I kinda miss a lot of the old tracks I used to listen to over SoundSense, and even if a lot of the new tracks sound very similar, it's just not the same.
Now that I think of it, have there been any plans to add something along the same vein as Willow and Light by Kevin McLeod? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uwluv_XKCfM In my personal view, this is the song that embodies the mystique of watching over the world as it comes into being before selecting a site that will become your dwarves' new home, and if I had to pick a song I miss the most from SoundSense, it would have to be this one. Now obviously, the real world is going to get in the way now that DF has gone premium, but I figured I'd put this out there.
and I know I've just asked for a lot, but speaking of all this, would there be a way to turn specific individual music tracks on or off? Sometimes I get sick of hearing one certain track or another, but only on that day. A music mod for the other things might be fine, but a music mod to remove existing tracks might be overkill, since that means the entire timeline now lacks that music track forever. If it's not possible, could it be possible to have a player-adjustable weighting system to reduce the frequency of certain tracks while boosting the likelihood of others? That might be enough, because I do remember how increasing the length between tracks did actually help me quite a lot in that regard, but I still kinda get frustrated at how frequently Strange Moods and Craftsdwarfship are always coming up all the freaking time, but I would love to hear Strike The Earth quite a bit more.
We're in the early stages of our next plans here, so there's nothing to announce yet!
It'd be possible to do fancy stuff with the tracks yeah. It's like the rest of the game now, so we'll just slowly be improving it with additional options and such. Suggestions always welcome! But it's hard to say when a given thing will happen.
1. Will relationships/marriages between different races ever be added into the game (i.e. human-elf, dwarf-elf, elf-dwarf, human-dwarf)?
1b. If yes, in-line with common fantasy tropes, would you consider ever adding half-elves, half-dwarves etc. as offspring of such marriages?
2. I remember seeing transgender/non-binary pops being mentioned a few years back somewhere as something that was planned. Is this still somewhere in the development pipeline perchance? I would absolutely love to see this included at some point 
3. Is there a chance that (perhaps as part of the map rewrite update) eventually the map will be an actual projection of a planet instead of a rectangle suspended in space? I imagine that once boats become a thing then being able to circumnavigate the globe would be a nice feature.
4. Will there ever be a more complex diplomacy and interactions system with other sites/civs? Anything to make the messenger useful for anything more than requesting workers?
5. Lastly, the Steam edition of the soundtrack currently is just compromised of 176 kbps MP3s, whereas the Bandcamp release has much higher quality files available. Is there a chance that FLAC tracks will be included in the Steam version at any point?
PatrikLundell:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8452459#msg8452459Miuramir:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8453105#msg8453105Putnam:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8453536#msg8453536Kat:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8453626#msg8453626dikbutdagrate:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8454938#msg8454938Shonai_Dweller:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8454940#msg84549401+3+4: I think the replies handle these as well as I can.
2. I think the focus on clothing in the replies isn't so important - it is true that clothing isn't gendered in DF and it's just not relevant. There are some more subtle markers though beyond beards, and especially elves have gendered societal positions for instance. So there's some room to consider it in-universe as it currently exists. But I do end up going back and forth because there's just not the normal amount of material to work with (it's a matter of will rather than implementation in other games, mostly), so I wonder how it'd be expressed. We have to ask why dwarves have pronouns in the first place, in the english rendering of statements about them - if we're secretly bringing along a lot of gender assumptions, and just not talking about them yet in game, then of course there should be transdwarves and others, since we sim stuff here. But I still feel like I don't see the path forward clearly, and that I'm not thinking clearly. Partially because I've been hesitant to bring in gender (and racial etc.) categories from the real world and putting them all through the game objects (as with clothing), but that still doesn't feel like the crux of things. Just putting in pronoun options as in other games is the obvious step, but it feels thin. Feels like I need a game object or something.
5. Hmm, I remember this coming up, but I don't recall exactly what the deal was here. I'll make a note to ask.
Speaking of Mason and Architect skills being obsolete and you were glad to get rid of them (redo Mason, remove Arch). What are other features of the game you see as wrong/obsolete or anyway in need of complete rework?
All the map code, ha ha ha. Items being hierarchical objects - the tool item type sucked up all the new ones and I really need the old ones to be more flexible like that, and it's also holding me back on the tool object to have the old ones there. The way it stores units in adventure mode is all wrong. There's a lot of stuff, really, and a lot of them are decisions from over a decade ago ha ha.
One of many things I love about Dwarf Fortress is how open to modding it is, laying the creature definitions out and opening them up to be changed and added to.
Did this way of handling things come with any larger headaches for development?
While writing a mod for a new creature and civ, I ran into trouble with several important tags serving very rigid dual purposes.
For instance, the UPPER_BODY, LOWER_BODY and HEAD tokens are all inherently related to equipment, but also to survivability.
Situations like that make it impossible to create e.g. creatures able to wear headgear on a head they can survive without - if they can wear hats, losing the head will always result in death.
On the flipside, other tokens seem to have no impact on various common circumstances.
To name a couple, creatures with NOBREATHE/NONAUSEA are still troubled by miasma, while creatures with NO_EAT/NO_DRINK/NO_EMOTIONS will still have related needs (but never fulfill them, leading them to be perpetually unfocused).
To what extent are creature-related tags as a whole maintained?
How prominent of a role are they intended to have in the game's current and future systems (thoughts, equipment, labor, magic)?
Are there currently any plans to expand their responsibilities?
Are there currently any plans to "officially" document the responsibilities of existing tags?
Thank you very much for this incredible work.
Dwarf Fortress really is one-of-a-kind, as are both the amount of care invested into- and the community grown around it.
I understand that all in all, these questions relate to a pretty niche element of DF, and that some things just have to be prioritized over others.
You have to keep respecting the format as best you can, since mods are all out there being worked on and you don't want to break them, but it's really not a huge hassle. I like the open format. It keeps my objects honest too.
Creature tags: I'm not sure what you mean - like how often do I come back and revisit them? Not that often, but it comes up. The tags are important to everything that intersects them, and they'll be expanded as we go. It's hard to keep things consistent/consistently useful/connected since it's a large game. The wiki has worked pretty well up to this point for documentation, and I try to help when people ask specific questions so that the wiki can be expanded (it often happens here in FotF), but it's too much of a burden for me to document everything and keep it up to date.
Any chance we could have pressure occasionally equalize the top of a standing body of liquid once it fills the contain it's in? I'm talking about having that annoying one remaining 4/7 tile magically combine with the 2/7 tile at the other end of the 200 tile long tunnel so that we don't have to wait in-game months for RNGesus to allow the tiles to find eachother with the current random fluid wandering, distracting dwarves the entire time with "dangerous terrain" warnings. Might even significantly speed up the current pathfinding recalculations caused by large standing bodies of flowing mixed 3/7-4/7 water.
Perhaps even a more granular fluid model with 255 levels instead of 7? The dwarves at a dry end of long corridor filled with 7/7 water at the other end wouldn't have to wait years for any water to get to them, and we would be able to have much more interesting and/or reasonable evaporation and flow mechanics with what looks a pretty small change.
voliol:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8452613#msg8452613I mean it's an algorithmic problem I don't have an immediate answer to. It'd have to be faster than what we are doing now, and flooding out across the map through arbitrary shapes is really not fast, and there are probably situations where the combinations aren't so clean as two tiles 4/2->3/3 where it'd need to do this or that. But it can definitely be better than it is now.
There's a cost to making the fluid model more granular, in bits, and in the possibility of additional fluids etc., so we have to be careful. It also makes things less clear to display perhaps, and harder to think about perhaps.
How does trap finding by enemies work? I know diplomats and spies can find them, but I'm not sure on the specifics, and the wiki doesn't have anything on it. May I get some in depth explanation?
PatrikLundell:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8453010#msg8453010Was a bit disappointed to note that Legends Mode no longer refers to "A Time before Time" (such as when a demon thrusts a spire up from the underworld). Was it all changed to the comparitively boring "Year 1" to make way for updates when Mythgen comes along?
Huh. I don't remember removing it for any specific reason. Maybe just a bug. Mythgen is definitely going to shake things up, but I don't recall prepping anything for it as it's still a way off and I'm not sure what I need. I also like the time before time construction.
Is it intentional that historical artifacts produced during world-gen do not simulate macabre moods? If this is intentional, what are the reasons for wanting to avoid historical artifacts made from vermin remains?
World-gen simulates fey and fell just fine, although you will occasionally get a chains made out of sand, which I don't think are possible items in actual fort-mode. While any number of historical artifacts can be evidently made out of dwarf/elf/goblin bones, you will not however see any historical artifacts made out of "vermin remains", as the only mood which has any probability of producing an artifact whose base reagent is a vermin remains is the macabre mood. Hence, we assume that the macabre mood is not being simulated during world-gen, which is something of a curiosity.
Pembroke:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8454554#msg8454554dikbutdagrate (op):
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8454844#msg8454844I'm almost certain I just hit some minor speedbump getting at the materials or something and was just like, moving on! They should definitely be there, in principle.
I have noticed that there are a whole lot of mods whose only purpose is to edit one or a few lines in the raws to fix a minor bug, like pools not spawning creatures that can only spawn in pools, dwarves not being able to wield big weapons, etc. Wouldn't it be wise to make a list of these small bugs and squish them all at once? If some randos on the Internet can do it, then surely the game's developer(s) can too, right?
Are there any plans to allocate potential development time, in the semi-to-near-future, toward addressing some of the longstanding minor bugs concerning the game's default creature raws?
While many of these issues do appear to be very minor in scope, and have already been addressed in a variety of player hosted mods, an official release would really help in lowering the cognitive over-head required from newer players, such as myself, to fix these things whenever we encounter them. It really stinks when we look forward to seeing a specific creature spawning, and it just doesn't!
Criperum:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8454574#msg8454574Shonai_Dweller:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8454581#msg8454581Schmaven:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8454603#msg8454603dikbutdagrate:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8454847#msg8454847People are right that there have always been bigger fish to fry, though ultimately it goes to the question if we should stop adding stuff and just fix bugs forever, which is a popular enough position. We have more options now, anyway, though Putnam is also frying big fish over in port land etc. There are big fish everywhere.
have you considered appointing at least one dedicated moderator to this forum? The subforum summaries indicate that a couple other users have been appointed as moderators in the past, but far as I can tell from checking their profiles and posts it looks like they haven't been active in years (Kurtulmak was last active over a decade ago, and Jonathan S. Fox not since last year, and both of those have subforum-specific moderator privileges it seems rather than general moderator authority).
Given the repeated incidents we've had in some of the politics-related subforums in the general section, I've been hit with the realization that having to split your attention between game development and community moderation is probably not ideal for anyone.
jecowa:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8455733#msg8455733Eschar:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8455738#msg8455738voliol:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8455755#msg8455755dikbutdagrate:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8455841#msg8455841Inarius:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8456171#msg8456171For people in the replies, the validation queue is a little slow, but it's roughly up to date, not months late. Generally, it still seems like moderators would cause more problems than they solve, and end up taking more of my time than (slowly, admittedly, in the latest case) banning the occasional troll.
Have you considered hiring a webmaster?
I have! It is increasingly the only way to go I think. I don't have any business running a web site/server/etc. It's just not my skillset and I'm obviously pretty terrible at it.
- Have you treated yourself with the new income? Like a really high end gaming/office chair or some artwork?
- Is a non-mouse interface for Classic theoretically possible with all of the UI changes (regardless of plans for it)?
- Zach says we've moved from Middling (18.6) to Wealthy (45.9) in the Victoria 3 parlance ha ha. I've treated myself to a better apartment, nothing else specific as of yet, but things have been so busy after launch there just hasn't been time to think about another treat. The general issues of paying people long-term and such seem to be settling in at least.
- Like keyboard only? That's where we're hoping to head now that we're emerging into the quality of life phase slowly after the arena patch. I think there are things that are hard about it, but if some kind of focused element can be made to live in the menus that should get us a lot of the way there. Hotkeys alone won't do it. Of course this means you'll be back to pressing keys 50 times to do simple things, but I think maybe that's just how things would be.
Do you miss drawing the crayon art rewards? Did you keep any scans/photos of them? Were they involved in helping the art team to draw the sprites?
Are there any mods which you're aware of that you'd consider adapting into the game, or which have or may inspire you to include new features?
Ha ha, it was really quite a bit of work. We didn't keep photos though we often considered it and failed to do so. I don't think the crayon rewards came up with the art team at all, not that I remember.
Obviously some of the utilities have come up in the development of the interface, since people were working with similar ideas to solve the problems we faced, but at this current moment nothing's really on my radar. Mostly because my radar is very buried right now ha ha.
Lately the updates/blog posts on the Bay 12 website and Steam alike have been very sparse. Can we expect this trend to continue going forwards, or is rather it that the current kind of work is hard to write about? The transparency in DF's dev cycle has always been a really strong point, imo, so it would be sad to see it lessened.
Shonai_Dweller:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8456902#msg8456902voliol (op):
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8456916#msg8456916I still hope that this is just a weird sparse time, yeah. March is full of stuff too that isn't me working on the game - everybody else is doing cool stuff though, as mentioned in the last report. But I'm already absolutely swamped. I'm trying my best to keep April clear. I have literally nothing scheduled in April, ha ha, and it's a great thing to look forward too. Really hoping it works out and we can kind of settle in to some normalcy. But these aren't normal times and we'll have to see. I have to keep adjusting and learning how to deal with the new situation.
Subterranean invaders are currently very zerg-like. Shouldn't there be an option to appease them somehow?
Something at least. I agree it's just garbage now.
Hello, I would like to ask some questions related to the user interface redesign that was part of 0.50.
1. How much did community feedback influence the redesign?
2. Were there any particular community suggestions that were implemented in the new interface?
3. If you did utilize community feedback/suggestions, was Bay 12 Forums the only source for them? Or were there other ones as well?
4. Were there any suggestions that were good at first glance but weren't practical to implement?
5. What UI/UX design theory did you read, if any?
6. Did you take any ideas for the redesign from critical reviews of Dwarf Fortress? If yes, which ones?
7. Did other games influence the redesign? If yes, which ones and in what way?
Unrelated to Dwarf Fortress itself, there's also another question: is there any obstacle to using messages on this forum as research material?
1. It was the reason it happened in the first place, from one angle, so it's like, 100%. If there weren't huge problems with the original design we wouldn't have needed it, and we needed to figure out what the problems were.
2. Probably too many to list, I think? But we didn't implement a specific set of feedback either (lots of people have posted very specific menu suggestions). We had to consider the game as a whole. Our version of the labor system, say, is a bit different from the mods, and our main control setup ended up different from anybody's mockups. But the ideas were certainly informative.
3. We looked all over the place, and people from other communities (e.g. reddit) also directed us to specific threads, etc.
4. Sure, this is pretty common. The basic rule with suggestions is that you try to identify the underlying problem and solve it, and just take the specific solution suggested under advisement but it's basically never quite right. The specific suggestions are made by people that don't generally take the whole project into consideration (which is understandable!) or who don't have a lot of experience (also understandable!), but their grievances are almost always rooted in something very real. It's our job to both fix problems and keep the project generally churning along happily. (and to be clear, suggestions do sometimes have good specific implementation ideas)
5. It's a profession! I talked to a professional person instead of trying to learn myself, when I could. Definitely should have done more. I've learned some things though, and it probably wouldn't hurt to take a little more time with study, but it's no replacement for somebody that knows what they are doing.
6. We didn't really have a lot of reviews until now. It was all more informal.
7. Sims and the Paradox catalog probably up there. We looked at many of our successor games as well, since we all face the same basic issues.
Messages as research: I didn't write most of them! I'm not sure what the obstacles typically are there.
In the arena, are necromancer abilities determined each time the Arena is generated? Seems to be the case, but I might be missing something.
Would be nice to see details of their secrets in the arena, like we can see active syndromes. But that's for the suggestions thread.
Yeah, I think it does cook them up. Felt like a way to keep myself honest at the time, but it's also pretty confusing.
"Bloat58, MORE LIVESTOCK, (Future): Livestock. Use of feathers. Use of wool. Various eggs and nests. Dwarves should hate eating plants all the time."
It seems like this bloat-bucket list item has been mostly addressed, minus the use of feathers in game. Are there any plans to add a 'decorate with feathers option' to the craftdwarf's workshop? Or should DF modders plan on providing the functionality in .5+?
Shonai_Dweller:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8458032#msg8458032Yeah, it's an old list as well, so I wouldn't wait for it to happen soon for sure. We like feathers though.
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Topic: Future of the Fortress (Read 3140881 times)