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[Toady One]

Development log
Development page

The purpose of the thread is to discuss current developments.  Specific bugs should be reported on the bug tracker, and specific suggestions belong for the most part in the suggestion forum.  Questions and comments about the development page or DF development somewhat more broadly work here, though any contentious topics that lead to derails are discouraged -- there are threads for those too.

If you have specific questions, I'll try to answer them all, although it is difficult to respond to everything when it is busy.  I'll lean toward questions that involve current developments to avoid pulling the entire suggestion forum in here.  In the past, we've all found the practice of making questions limegreen works pretty well.  You do that like this:

Code: [Select]

[color=limegreen]making questions limegreen[/color]

Here is the last reply from the last thread:

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=159164.msg7701845#msg7701845

At the time of this thread's creation, the current plan was continuing working on bugs and smaller suggestions while integrating features important to both the magic releases and making the long wait for the magic release more tolerable, generally related to armies and villains.  Then we'll move on to myths and magic, before tackling embark scenarios and their associated frameworks (law, property, customs, status, etc.).

[thvaz]

Oh the awesomeness. Please give us all those Dwarf Army improvements before the Magic/Myth arc!

[Shonai_Dweller]

Specifically which portions of the rest of the Improved Sieges notes (besides prisoner stuff) are you leaning towards leaving us with before the Big Wait?

[Rubik]

In the actualized development log there's ''ability to interrogate prisioners(both modes)
Can this be understood as that we'll finally get torture and good cop bad cop in fort mode?

[Asin]

Could you please elaborate on "adventurer party support" in the "Improved Character Creation" section of the development page?

[Inarius]

PTW

[Putnam]

How could "Reflecting on negative circumstances that were missed while drunk" work given that drunkenness is a syndrome? Some sort of syndrome effect?

[ZM5]

I'm really liking some of the new stuff on the dev page.

I have two questions.
Are you planning on expanding the dark pits/fortresses, hillocks, hamlets, and smaller forest retreats to have similar "facilities" as towns do?

I notice dark pits sites have taverns, libraries and so on listed in legends, but they don't actually exist in the game proper. I don't recall seeing those abstract locations for hillocks, small forest retreats and hamlets, but those could definitely use having small versions of those. Hillocks and dark pits in particular seem like they need some improvements, considering they seem to lack armory areas, and drinking mounds dont even have furniture or booze.

Secondly, is the small size of current mead halls intentional? I noticed that after 44 they're a lot smaller than pre-44, and don't seem to ever go as many z-levels down as before.

[Shonai_Dweller]

All this launching of wars, attacking, assasinating and interrogation of gorlak prisoners is fantastic stuff, but there's an issue with dwarf ethics/values right now which makes npc dwarf sites never, ever launch attacks against their enemies.

I know it's not hardcoded because I copy/pasted my 'bad dwarf' modded race (who were attacking in worldgen) values/ethics into the dwarf entity and they started going to war. And of course regular dwarves will attack players who provoke them right now.

So, I guess my question is, are you going to nudge npc dwarf sites to be a bit more aggressive during wars this time around? It gets kind of lonely fighting by yourself.

[Manveru Taurënér]

Specifically which portions of the rest of the Improved Sieges notes (besides prisoner stuff) are you leaning towards leaving us with before the Big Wait?

From the way it's worded it seems to refer to specifically just the prisoner stuff? (as in, he cut those 2 items out of the improved sieges section and into the pre-magic stuff).

Something that struck me earlier thinking of the myth and magic stuff, and as far as I can remember hasn't been officially talked about (someone please point me in the right direction if it has):
Do the plans for permanent changes to occur to myth-level elements during regular play include changes to races? It's a fairly common fantasy theme after all to have races be cursed and/or corrupted and become dark elves and whatnot.

[Sooner535]

Just fyi I am someone who is fairly new to DF, I am currently going through every DFTalk (I have done the newest and oldest so far) and will be studying up so I can avoid asking things that probably have been asked to death or answered before in a non-forum way and I simply don't know about it. With that said:

Will battles and war and the likes ever be an on-screen thing? Will I be able to watch and control my dworfs in epic battles, offensive sieges, or see them in a town I captured? Will raids follow that eventually or will only certain things get that king of treatment? Or will that not happen at all?

Will combat speed be slowed slightly to allow players to look at fights better? I notice that once over 10 units get into a fight I don’t care enough to look which really hurts things imho, idk how much this would affect things but maybe a slight increase in body part HP or lowering of weapon damage? Or perhaps is this exactly how you want it to work as is and the showing of combat info will get better at some point?

Will you be able to read books in fortress mode eventually? Or even write the books?

Will we ever see larger shields introduced to the main game? Even just a tower shield that reduces speed slightly but has a higher chance to block would be acceptable (then you have buckler for speed, tower shield for defense, and shield for inbetween

Will we ever see a hobbits type fantasy race? More peaceful little guys that just farm and try and stay out of the way?

[DoctorDorf]

The last section in the starting scenarios mentions the relationship between the fort and hill/deep dwarves. Will we get to see the dwarves living around our forts demand things in return for their tribute? E.g. will they come to the fort for justice in disputes, or maybe as temporary refugees fleeing from an invading army? The theoretical idea of being surrounded by farming hillocks and have the fort focus only on government, mining & warfare could be really good!

[Knight Otu]

Thanks for the answers, Toady!

Something that struck me earlier thinking of the myth and magic stuff, and as far as I can remember hasn't been officially talked about (someone please point me in the right direction if it has):
Do the plans for permanent changes to occur to myth-level elements during regular play include changes to races? It's a fairly common fantasy theme after all to have races be cursed and/or corrupted and become dark elves and whatnot.

During the GDS myth talk, there was a piece where a god cursed a group of fey to become demons as a punishment, and I think I remember seeing something about cursing dwarves to become goblins as well. I could see something like this happen where instead of using an existing race, it would derive the new race from the old.

[FantasticDorf]

I notice dark pits sites have taverns, libraries and so on listed in legends, but they don't actually exist in the game proper. I don't recall seeing those abstract locations for hillocks, small forest retreats and hamlets, but those could definitely use having small versions of those. Hillocks and dark pits in particular seem like they need some improvements, considering they seem to lack armory areas, and drinking mounds dont even have furniture or booze.

The typical theme of dark towers are that goblins are a ill tempered race who live in caves (rooms are literally 1x2 doors with holes and floorspace to sleep in, which many goblins dogpile onto one another) and in extreme poverty. Actually within the ground layer of the tower is a enormous stockpile of weapons and that gather up from skirmishes on site (usually between other goblins) and statues since its all for display compared to the reality of the underground living complex, same can be seen in reclaimed dwarf sites where goblin goods from failed attacks stack up.

Lets see what Toady says, but perhaps goblin establishments are better suited out of town away from the dark tower fortifications and we still need to make the jump to spawn those sites on a not pure self contained site level, but just as civilization connected landmarks for sites that have planning development room outside of what is hardcoded.

Hillocks & Dark pits are not independent, they rely on the Fortresses (dark and dwarf) or protection & for trade, as per Toady's mapping choices.

[Rubik]

The 'medical improvements' listed in the dev log are for adv. mode only, or we also are gonna get improvements in fort mode healthcare?
Could you elaborate on the type of improvements you've thought?