Did you already had cool ideas that you must have turned down because of the game's limitations ?
Even if this would take forever, and assuming you want to keep the ASCII and the 2D viewport anyway, do you ever feel like, at some point, far in the distant future, the game would need or benefit some kind of full rewrite to be able to keep receiving new, interesting and significant features ?
There are things yeah, either on a permanent or temporary basis. The reordering of the map code, and various other rewrites/updates will help will that. And some things just aren't possible without heavy restrictions/hand-waving (time-related stuff mainly, like time travel and prophecy.) Really interesting fluid stuff is just beyond the FPS, but hopefully we'll be able to do a bit more. Same with good structural architecture etc., though we should be able to make some progress.
But I think on the general point of the game continuing to have new, interesting and significant features, we still have a ton we can do with the existing codebase. For instance, most of the myth/magic stuff, entity/law/army stuff, etc etc is all going to work fine, and then on and on. But we'll also be updating the code base to help things along.
The new dwarf unit sprites are everything I've wanted to see. High fives to Tarn and the graphics team! I suppose everything will be sorted out in the coming days - missing limbs, crafts, the other races?
Some minor feedback on it - the wood melee weapons should use the "grown" sprites anyways, the macahuitl should be specifically for obsidian, and leather shields should match wood.
Since we won't be able to see their sprites flash pink anymore, will nobility in adventure mode spawn with more relevant equipment to visually distinguish them? High-quality stuff, rare dyes, crafts, proper weapons, maybe even armor for the militia, could all work even if they aren't designated as historical symbols of office.
Yeah, we're still working with them! Next beta release will get dwarf armor up with the new dwarf wearables sheet, along with crowns and earrings (only one crown so far ha ha.) And left hand vs right hand weapons/shields/crutches, and grown weapons! Also, humans, elves, gobs, kobs are all in that release in the new format. I think I have most/all of what I need for animal people to have weapons and some wearables too, but that probably won't be in this particular upcoming beta release. And necromancer experiments, though those are harder because of the procedural format and may wait a bit. Missing limbs is on the list but not done yet. We'll just keep going with it. There's a lot to do and it's all cool ha ha.
It'd be very useful yeah. It would make sense for the important people in their official rooms to not always just be "random looking normal person in the room", especially when we now have tools like symbol of office which are underutilized but basically ready to use.
Why do goblin civilizations and necromancer towers attack your fortress regardless of whether they are at war with you? They do not behave this way towards other sites, as far as I know. Will this be changed in the future?
Will chimeras, centaurs, and griffons be fully implemented in the future? It would be nice to have a few more generic fantasy creatures in the game.
Why are leggings [SHAPED]? This prevents them from being worn alongside greaves, which seems like something you should be able to do, considering mail shirts can be worn under breastplates.
How difficult would it be for you to implement the ability to combine stackable items into a single stack?
Why are giant cave spiders the only creatures with [AMBUSH_PREDATOR]?
Why are cave spider bites permanent? Phantom spider bites are basically the same thing but not permanent, I would think it would be the other way around given phantom spiders are only found in evil biomes.
Why are prickle berries, fisher berries, and sun berries plants with no fruits instead of being plants with fruits like strawberries are?
How big are underground regions?
Shouldn't bee stings cause a negative thought?
Why do some deep cavern creatures have ARENA_RESTRICTED? It's a little annoying that if you want to spawn those creatures in the arena that you need to remove that tag. I guess it's there to prevent spoiling the existence of those creatures but that doesn't really matter anymore since animal products from layers 2 and 3 are available on embark now.
Why is dwarven sugar the only kind of sugar in the game? Sugarcane seems like something that should exist.
Eric Blank:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8550641#msg8550641Worlder:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8550697#msg8550697Eric Blank:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8550744#msg8550744Egan_BW:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8550745#msg8550745DPh Kraken:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8550968#msg8550968dikbutdagrate:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8551394#msg8551394Eric Blank:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8551643#msg8551643Yeah, the attack triggers are ancient. It's very gamey and we want to change it. Likely part of the army changes. The triggers are a proxy for civs knowing about you and deciding they want what you have or attacking you, and centering the player site made sense early on. Once you can participate in broader wars and diplomacy, the direct pressure on your site can be made more organic. The start scenario stuff also figures into this - if you are a "frontline" military outpost, then you'll be under more pressure, as you'd expect. The problem will then become things feeling very unfair, like getting swept away immediately. I'm all for this, but it needs to be properly shown/warned on embark/etc.
The responses covered the chimera stuff. Tricky problem that'll slowly become easier, and then should explode into all sorts of wondrous and horrible crap.
Shaped leather: Hmm.... I have no memory of this. Was I thinking of some hard leather/scaled/barred thing? No idea.
Restacking: There'd be some lost information. Have to be careful about when to check or there'll be an FPS nightmare I think. And have to be careful of jobs, especially different jobs on both stacks etc. So I'm not sure, not impossible, but these are the sources of inertia.
Giant spiders: AMBUSH_PREDATOR is reasonably old tag for underground web ambushes maybe, rather than a general tag.
Cave spiders: Cave spiders are older, just the way it turned out.
Berries: They are ancient and I imagine I didn't want to disrupt anything. Strawberries are also ancient but I probably felt more precise to get them in line with the newer real world plants.
Underground regions: I think they are about the same size as geological layers, which are maybe 15-20 world map tiles. Something vaguely like that.
Bee stings: Just one of the many things that wasn't converted to a thinkable circumstance/emotion at the time of addition.
ARENA_RESTRICTED: yeah it's an old tag.
Sugar: just one of the many plants not in the game.
1. Prior to v50, the resulting carnage of particularly brutal fights would sometimes leave things such as a "slurry of chunky blood" or a "pile of gore" as well as other bits and pieces of creatures that weren't necessarily body parts or blood pools. Since this appears to no longer be present in the Steam release, I was wondering if their exclusion was merely due to factors such as time constraints or if they were officially out of the picture by design?
2. Are you planning to have the upcoming Myth and Magic update change the "traditional story" of the game (that is, dwarves delving too deeply and greedily into cotton candy and encountering the circus)? By that I mean will it remain a consistent feature of the worlds (the consistent feature being the circus wrapped in cotton candy deep under the earth) you generate if their "Mythgen slider" is at the default setting or will that also be subject to change?
aSpatula66:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8550897#msg85508971. Ha ha, yeah, I remember that. And the chunks. The code is all still sitting around, it just needs a context. The main place it used to be was that look paragraph that sometimes got very long that started with "Here we have ..." and could yeah sometimes end with "all in a pile of gore." or wtvr. With the new hover window, it made sense to just merge it with the dwarf mode system. But those sentences were fun and it'd be nice to put them someplace.
2. I think the setup as it exists will be some sort of default setting yeah. It remains to be seen what format the "editors/constraints" etc. stuff takes, and whether we in fact get an even more default setting just to demonstrate some of what we want to do there (such as allowing people to add site maps and historical figures and chronologies.) Dwarf Fortress as a whole of course wants to be procedural/randomized, and in that sense, everything should be changeable, so I expect that what'll probably happen is that the underworld will remain as a kind of ultra-hardcore-default setting/object, which'll then be mushed out/generalized/different when you say "give me a fantasy world", as we add more. But respecting the plump helmet person and gorlak and pig tail and such means having some kind of home for them. And our txt format/etc. will always need to be able to encode such things, so it makes sense to keep them around.
the latest update adds support for palletized dwarf equipment, but the unit sprites are still being color coded by job type rather than using the more literal colors of the materials such as those seen in the closeup portraits. is this the ultimate design, or will unit sprites be brought to closer parity with the portraits?
im fascinated by the palletization technology in general: are palletized forgotten beasts / angels / demons considered to be a part of the initial adventure mode release, or is that for post-adventure mode?
Edit bonus question: Will we be able to see instruments that Bards are wielding?
DPh Kraken:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8550968#msg8550968The ultimate goal I think was to have a setting that let you flip between profession and dye mode. With the new palettized layer files, I think we're pretty much ready to implement that, though there could be some hiccup or another. For the default in dwarf mode, I'm not really sure! I think the current professions are still useful to see, but things have always been mushy there. Could be the player should also be able to choose colors for their dwarves/work details - the game would need to know how to handle this, which is potentially tricky. I think we'll just keep evolving it to satisfying more play styles/preferences.
We're pretty close to needing palettized procedural beasts, yeah. I'm not sure if it'll be in precisely before or after the adv mode full launch, since it's in the magic domain and that's all just continuing on with the army/etc. stuff. But it's definitely feeling nearer term.
I think instruments will come up as we go, yeah! We just got crowns and earrings, scepters are in the file too I think though I forgot them for the next beta, and it'll just keep on improving.
With myth&magic, will there be any way to cure things like curses, thralldom, etc.?
I imagine some curses may get something. The worst husking seems harder, more like a full resurrection but not unprecedented I suppose ha ha. Though I think in some universes, and all of them at first of course, you're just going to be out of luck.
Why has Zach stopped posting monthy announcements with you? Is it due to a business change or a private matter?
Everything's cool. We've just had a little more trouble coordinating it lately with all that's going on, and the monthly report became something different after the Steam release, so it's in this current form now.
Hello, I love your game so much!
My question concerns "Intelligent Wildlife." Are there any plans in the work to make them more interactable?
Animal People are one thing (I really wish we could interact with them more, too), but creatures like Gorlaks and Satyrs being functionally no different from a badger or something feels like a huge waste. And of course the ever beloved Plump Helmet Men.
With all the talk of myths and magic, I am fearful of them being left behind.
Thank you for responding, if you can!
ps: I am aware of how certain individuals can join civilizations, but I mean the creatures as a whole. Gorlaks can speak, are creatures of Good, and are even loved by Dwarfs... Yet they can only wander about until caught in a cage or killed.
This was going to be part of the "entity rewrite" arc (which was scheduled previously as army -> magic -> entity, but which is now just part of the mix), the realization of nomadic/subterranean societies and individuals, since the current framework doesn't support their overall context well. Now that we are moving out of the arc framework to try to be more flexible/release-y/branchy, it's simply something on the table. Something important, because plump helmet people and gorlaks shouldn't be disrespected.
Hi!
I'm trying to figure out what other configurations of positions and responsibilities might have an interesting effect on the behaviour of the civ as a whole. I notices LAW_GIVING on the monarch and the landholder.
Does the responsibility LAW_MAKING has any effect in the behaviour of the civ? Do those nobles make any laws or rules of some kind? I know already the function of MILITARY_GOALS to some extend and suspect what RECEIVE_DIPLOMATS might do, but i'am eager to learn more!
Eric Blank:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8552228#msg8552228joostheger (op):
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8552320#msg8552320Eric Blank:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8552376#msg8552376TheFlame52:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8552377#msg8552377A_Curious_Cat:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8552390#msg8552390TheFlame52:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8552394#msg8552394I think the link Eric Blank posted it about covers it? It's not super interesting right now because we didn't make it to the entity/law stuff yet. The creation/naming of positions got well out ahead of making them interesting, which is unfortunate but not atypical for the game ha ha.
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Topic: Future of the Fortress (Read 3077937 times)