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[CaptainArchmage]

Now that we'll be able to interact with and create hill dwarf sites, will we have a means to store and retrieve excessive items off-map (say, in a hill dwarf site)?

This could also remove that source of FPS drain...

[FantasticDorf]

insurrections happen as a consequence of world activation (they happen all over the place, what toady is saying is that your site should be treated no differently), i dont expect there to be a notification either, personally.

Well since a un-homogenized local population may have their own opinions which makes them more likely to join in with a insurrection or not with the point of perspective in adventure mode, it'll be interesting to see if anything comes out of it. Exiled cheesemaker hillock rebellions throwing giant molten gourds via catapults attacking the capital.

No notification would be a pity, suddenly disappearing off screen for little explanation would be outrageously difficult to deal with.

[Untrustedlife]

insurrections happen as a consequence of world activation (they happen all over the place, what toady is saying is that your site should be treated no differently), i dont expect there to be a notification either, personally.

Well since a un-homogenized local population may have their own opinions which makes them more likely to join in with a insurrection or not with the point of perspective in adventure mode, it'll be interesting to see if anything comes out of it. Exiled cheesemaker hillock rebellions throwing giant molten gourds via catapults attacking the capital.

No notification would be a pity, suddenly disappearing off screen for little explanation would be outrageously difficult to deal with.

Sorry, when i say "your site" i mean any site you are occupying. Not your fort .

[Dutchling]

Will having hillocks around your site give advance warning of a sieges arrival?

yes: "Defensive off-site armies, ability to stall and report on incoming sieges"

[DG]

Ah, thanks. Hm...Nothing linking it directly to hillock populations surrounding your fort and as it's in white so it's unlikely to be imminent.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Ah, thanks. Hm...Nothing linking it directly to hillock populations surrounding your fort and as it's in white so it's unlikely to be imminent.

That whole top section is imminent. It's all the candidates for pre-mythgen (as in, right now) additions. Some of it might not make it due to time, but Toady's given himself an extension on the current "small updates" phase to around October. Mythgen development will be long, so he wants this big chunk of the army arc in before he starts to keep us amused.

(Taking over sites is completed but is still in white, wouldn't worry about that, dev notes take a while to update).

[Toady One]

Thanks to PlumpHelmetMan, PatrikLundell, Manveru Taurënér, Knight Otu, Shonai_Dweller, Putnam, KittyTac, Bumber, Untrustedlife, Dutchling, and anybody I missed for helping to answer questions!  A few questions that were answered completely were removed, as usual, so please check back in the thread if you don't find your question answered below!

Wait, you said memory doesn't do much, I'm not just imagining things when it seems to help retain more of the "previously viewed but not visible" layout especially when deep in a catacomb or sewer, am I?

Doing a code search, memory is used as a skill roll modifier for animal care, herbalism, diagnosis, appraisal, recordkeeping, mathematics, astronomy, chemistry, geography, and reading.  That's it.  No maps or anything.

Can we expect new magical materials, like mithril or sapient pearwood, from which to make weapons? And other stuff I guess.

Will we ever be able to encrust our weapons with gems? Incorporating magical gems into sword pommels seems a pretty common trope in fantasy settings.

Yeah, it seems like procedural magical materials are almost guaranteed, as they already exist in the vaults, and adamantine will find itself put in the slurry somehow (like dwarves, certain vanilla elements might be preferred at default settings; it'll have to interact with the existing/selected raws.)

PlumpHelmetMan brought up the current general existence of encrusting; as for magic encrusting, yeah, I agree that gems/runes/etc. seem like a strong possibility.  As expected, it's hard to say what'll come first.

What's the current rationale for travel (fast travel, caravans, and embarking) through mountains being blocked? I assumed initially it had to do with provisions, but deserts can be crossed with ease, and mountains do not frequently have difficult cliffs, or any less forageable resources than elsewhere (adventurers still get hungry and thirsty as they normally do off mountains, right?)
If the current behavior is unintended, is the direction you'd like to take in justifying the limitation (mountains generating such that it is a lot more difficult to traverse, high altitude hazards, etc) or just opening mountains to travel?

I believe it was the previous existence of cliffs, coupled with the desire to do passes and tunnels, and so on.  It's likely the upcoming map rewrite coupled with the relatively new addition of climbing will see cliffs back in the mountains to some extent.  I'm not sure when we'll get to altitude hazards aside from falling.

Once temperatures are more meaningful and magic is in, will creatures otherwise unaffected by temperatures, out of sync with reality, beyond time, etc by impacted by temperatures below absolute zero? Just wondering since those temperatures are currently possible.

Ha ha, yeah, who knows?  I left those odd values in for magical purposes, like unnatural heat gradients, but when you actually cross the threshold, perhaps tiered rules might apply, instead of simply making temperature change quickly.  Hard to say; it's an unusual setup and will need to be make whatever sense in-system.

1.  Is it possible with the magic world generation to create very strange worlds?  Like worlds that have no sun and are cast into eternal darkness or worlds comprised of floating islands over a sea of lava and FUN.  (or just some floating islands in general... because building a fortress that hangs under a floating island just sounds awesome)

2. Will we eventually see more complex reaction between civilizations and races.  Like people generating stereotypes and hatred for certain races and groups based on interactions?   Or say a race of elves living isolated for their entire history meeting a human adventure for the first time thus having no idea what a human is.

3.  Will language be expanded on like music and such.  Being randomly generated and having to be taught/learned?   It be interesting to see if one language rises to the top of the heap to become that worlds version of 'common'   Or if the myth/history generate makes a single world language that was created by a god for the people to use.    Also maybe species with langagues that can't be spoken or understood by others do some some biological reasion.

1. The way the map rewrite plans are shaping up, I'd say certain oddities are quite, quite likely.  Changing astronomical objects is a different sort of challenge; it's not as hard as the map rewrite, but also not as crucial.  A form of it already exists in the prototype myth generator, but we'll have to see how the first pass goes.  Certain bits regarding seasonal hardcoding and other issues might provide some inertia.

2. I'm not sure when we're going to get into this sort of thing and which forms it will take.  Certainly reasonable to consider, and we have a bit of first contact stuff up on dev under explorer if I remember.

3. Yeah.  I'm not sure *when*, but I'm looking forward to it and it's an earlier non-DF interest of mine.

Now that the dwarves are able to get traumatised again and not nerve-stapled by alcohol, are we likely to see an update to socialising that allows dwarves to make friends/etc while not idle, seeing as dwarves are rarely actually idle these days?

Was this still completely not working?  I've had friends and lovers arise during recent testing, after I changed some of how chatting during socializing works in the not too distant past (some releases back though.)

I think even in worlds where there is a 'true' myth/religion, there will be plenty of people who have a different idea of how things work. It's not just in myth-low worlds, worlds without gods, etc., where different non-real ideas should be generated, I feel. People come up with their own ideas of how things work, even if they're not real (we can see this is true even without assuming an atheistic view of the real world just from the simple fact that there exist mutually exclusive ideas/religions). I don't think the presence of a 'real' myth or god(s) should change that.

I've seen Toady make diverse statements in this regard, so I just thought I'd throw in my two cents. If anybody knows how to make this into an actual question, please be my guest.

Within the myth and general belief systems of each civ, will there be room for interpretation of the myth or emphasis on parts of the myth that differ on an individual or entity wide scale within the same civ? Is that perhaps something for Starting Scenarios and it's various culture/society development points?

(I know the initial world myth is one 'truth' that's interpreted by each civ, but I mean on a more granular scale within each civilization).

I disagree; if miracles in the real world were more commonplace, people would generally start to adopt compatible beliefs, the same way some basic form of germ theory is now (kinda) accepted by the world.  Naturally, there's room for some outliers and other this-and-thats, and obviously people believe a lot of weird things about germs, but they also (generally) take a lot of antibiotics and (variously) understand what is going on.  So "I don't think the presence of a real myth or god(s) should change that" is too far; underlying reality has a huge impact on what people believe and how they behave, especially if there are consequences for being wrong (walking into large fires is not common, say, though it happens.)

But yeah, it doesn't mean everybody has to believe the same thing, just that reality has a large say.

Practically speaking, I think even early pass myths will see emphasis and interpretation; the feeling that civilizations are different is important to us.  But if there's a giant purple glowing electrical ball in the sky, I expect each civilization will have a view on it (once they have views on that sort of thing at all.)  Almost universally its existence will be acknowledged, and generally its behaviors and associated phenomena will be respected.  If something about it isn't understood, some will research, and some will believe odd things; it seems that'll also be an early result of wanting to have magical research in the game at all, having targets of research, so the chances of seeing stuff here are actually pretty high.  Some of it will be automatic, and some of it will just be mega-low-hanging; there'll be so much in the latter category that it's hard to commit to particulars just now, though.

1. I saw in the development plans that adventure mode might be getting ridable mounts at some point in the future. How will this affect NPCs? Will we see knights riding horses or mounted bandits and stuff like that in adventure mode? Also, if you had an amphibious mount, could you cross the ocean with it on the world map? Would that affect civilizations and let them colonize or attack other continents? It might be a good placeholder for cross-continental travel until boats are implemented.

2. Are there any plans to let the player teach secrets they learn in worldgen before the magic arc?

3. Mountain roads are currently impassible for adventure mode characters (in the world map anyways), but will NPC groups like armies that would otherwise be separated by a mountain range be able to use them to cross the mountains?

4. Regarding the addition of hillocks to a fortress's surroundings, what will happen to modded civilizations that use, say, hamlets and cities as their site type? Would a fortress belonging to that civilization spawn hamlets, or hillocks? Or would there be errors and bugs in such an event?

1. There are separate issues with each scenario you describe; it'll start player-focused most likely, but it'd be nice to get something in there with NPCs.  I'd guess individual NPC stuff is more likely than any more abstract civ changes for this one in the nearer term.

2. I don't expect anything like this before magic.

3. I think they cheat right now; mountain pathing was causing trouble that I didn't have time to address.  That probably won't change for a while.

4. Hillocks aren't very different from human villages, and I anticipate respecting the site type; the playable site will remain unchanged.

When adventure pets goes in, will it including lifting animals? Will adventurers be able to be included in cattle raiding and the like by snatching stray chickens in villages? Will there be stocking fish in ponds since vermin fish are often sold as an item already?

Ha ha, when I read that I thought you meant picking them up and carrying them, so that they, like, wouldn't get their feet muddy or something.  It wouldn't surprise me at all if you could steal animals, especially mounts, though of course "steal" is still somewhat undefined.  As for the broader economic stuff, I wouldn't expect that until we do industrial stockpiles etc. more generally.

Has Ars Magica ever sparked your interest? Did you read, or plan to read some material on the setting and the game mechanic?

For the farther future:

Because if I ever get a chance to regrow my dwarves limbs I will abuse it:
Will there be conditions on how many times something can be the target of a spell? Can we try to congeal a bucket of water and get told "The substance has become magically inert."? Or try to heal our companion for the thousandth time and get "This creature has become saturated with energy."?

Also because sometimes it feels like I'm getting attacked for very little reason, Is there any plans for forcing emotional state without altering memories? The straight eared goblin suddenly feels calm. Can we otherwise make someone forget what they are doing?

Toady talks a bit about keeping players free, but still letting dwarves have an identity, Do you feel magic mechanisms and machines feel "dwarfy"? Is it something that feels appropriate, or something to tolerate like venom and poison?

For the closer future:

Dwarves are a disorganized mess in combat, while this is understandable, Are we going to see some effects of the tactician skill in the fortress before jumping on to magic? Will we be able to make dwarves hold their ground against a force?

On a similar note, Will dwarves be able to take cover from missile fire and still have LOS, firing, using something other than fortifications? Boulders? Buildings? Tables? Trees? Large dead bodies?

There are various 'corruption'/etc. options on the table.  I'm not sure what it'll roll out with.

Interactions can already affect emotions (to some small effect), so I expect that trend to continue.

I think the dwarf "identity" will float a bit with the myth now; runes and magic swords in one, mechanical gadgets in another, magical alcohol in another.  The baseline is to remain "dwarfy" in any sense; we might end up assigning salience scores based on sphere matches or any of a number of other possibilities, and this applies to all of the creatuers.  Gadgets are certainly a common enough dwarfy feature in fantasy; even more traditional tales.

I doubt we'll see formations soon, or other serious combat changes that you mentioned; possible exceptions involve the mount stuff and whatever happens with sieges etc.

So as far as I can see, the administration of sites outside of your fortress seems to be one of the current things that are being worked on.
What exactly are the current goals you have in mind for the administration feature? I mean what kind of abilities will this give access to the player? I think I heard of requesting/sending migrants and soldiers. Is this about what to expect in the next releases?

As for the next version we will be able to send dwarves to settle in occupied sites, how far away are we from dwarves leaving the fortress on their own, for discontentment, fear, etc?

We're finally getting hill dwarves and interactions with them, but what sort of interactions did you have in mind? Will hillocks be able to provide laborers and soldiers, can we send laborers to them, or like tributes of food and plant/animal products? Do we run all the defence for them, or do they use their own militias when possible?
Do we get a liaison or messenger role to communicate with them?

What prerequisites will they have? Like is a land holder position always necessary, or were you introducing a new tag to control their formation?

If your civ builds cities or forest retreats, will hamlets and such form around your fort instead? What if my civ lives in caves?

Now that we'll be able to interact with and create hill dwarf sites, will we have a means to store and retrieve excessive items off-map (say, in a hill dwarf site)?

Will having hillocks around your site give advance warning of a sieges arrival? Will hostile armies drive people in these hillocks to the (assumed) greater safety of your fort site, like people in a town running to a citadel, or is it not that sort of relationship?

Real details'll have to wait for an update post; I'm still working on it, keeping in mind that there won't be much in the first release.  It wouldn't surprise me to see people sent back and forth, but something could always come up; for instance, people sometimes move of their own accord or as part of a civ-level site creation, etc., and this could end up interacting strangly with the new player-centered mechanics.  Linking the fort in with the world is going to have some road blocks.

We're slowly circling emigration especially with the hill dwarf sites coming into play.  Certainly, even now, if a dwarf is about to totally flip out on a permanent basis, it would be the same (or less) of a player loss for them to just leave, so I don't think there's a balance or player investment issue here.  It's just something that needs to happen.

Ha, yeah, liaisons are on the table, but it'll probably be messengers first.  We're looking forward to having a fort with the civ monarch run all the liaisons, for instance, but we very well might not get to that particular feature in this release series.

Sites can fight on their own, generally, but they aren't necessarily good at it.  Skilled and well-equipped fort dwarves will usually be better, and sending some out to the hills (and then training up and equipping some new ones at the fort) would be a useful strategy for keeping your lands intact.  You'd be able to cycle them back in if you want to see them again or need one of their civilian skills, when I get to that.

The land holder position will very likely come from the hill dwarves/conquests, rather than the other way around, even in the next release.  Some of the triggers might still exist, especially for elevated forts that can't have further lands for whatever reason, and as a way of gauging when hill dwarves should start to show up, before we have more reliable and in-depth economic/safety indicators.

Items are a bit trickier; without the economy stuff, everything is still tracked pretty clumsily, so I'm not sure what's going to happen there.  Certainly the tribute system can be expanded, and food etc. to the little extent that you need to import any, or trade in some way, but I'm not starting there, as the undergirding structure is weak.  We were originally planning to have fairs with all of your hill dwarves represented, but that was an economy-driven idea that assumed more of the work had been done.

Large numbers of people can't shelter in your fort for frame rate reasons, but we might have some smaller representation of what's going on eventually.

<screenshot of polite discussion and ascension to throne>

It made me wonder, as it's not the first fortress in which i had a king choosen like that and as far as i remember it had happened for a few years already.

As historically a pretender reaching an understanding with his rivals in "polite discussion" in order to be choosen as a king wasn't really the only way this happened, will we see in the future many more methods a dwarven pretender can rise on a throne in your own fortress (i mean at gameplay time in opposite to worldgen) ?

We had that failed position claim mechanic which is still technically in the game, but it just didn't end up being opportune as there was too little to support it.  That surrounding situation continues to slowly become better, but I'm not sure when we'll get back to that kind of struggle and diplomacy.

It seems to me like you would run into problems trying to balance stress because some players want stress to be a difficult to handle problem with big consequences and other players would rather want it to be more easily handled and their dwarves not constantly falling into depression.
Are you going to try to find some kind of middle ground that could maybe satisfy everyone or would you consider implementing something like a slider that controls how prone people in the world are to stressing out?

The raws exist as a slider currently (setting stress vulnerability, for example), and I'm not sure what the myth sliders will end up looking like; does what the "violence level" slider become enter into this?  Possible.  For now, I'd just like to provide some non-broken texture and occasional problem dwarves, and heavy issues for those experimental forts where people intentionally mistreat their dwarves as a kind of baseline.  With the next release, we should be a bit closer, though there's a possibility that people might be too happy again if they process their emotions too fast...  it's hard to run sufficient long-enough tests from my position.  Seems okay so far.  I certainly don't expect that everyone will be satisfied, but the base stress vulnerability will always be moddable.

Any hope for methods of exploring the map around us?
Send an expedition to the east and discover a kobold cave we never heard about?

I don't think this'll happen in the near term, but there's a whole dev section for exploration, maps, etc.  It's adventurer focused up there, but it'd translate over.

[Toady One]

Every so often a dwarf can "remember/relive/dwell upon" the memory, if their personality leans toward the given emotion (positive or negative), and receive an additional stress change.

In the devblog on memories, you mentioned that the thoughts dwarves dwell upon depend on the personality of the dwarves. Does that mean we can mod stress impact levels indirectly by altering personality raws? Or would that only result in subtle shifts overall?

As an example, one of my citizens "believes taking time off to relax is evil" (or something very similar, not in front of my computer right now). How much less impact is socializing giving him than a regular dorf who loves merrymaking?

<The quote> theoretically should mean that personalities leaning towards violence and killing stuff, should get positive reactions from dead bodies.
But I'm pretty sure the personality system isn't that flexible.  I was just wondering how flexible it could be. And how much personality could actually shift stress impact (besides 'not prone to stress').

Yeah, there's only a certain amount of flexibility to the initial emotions (as you can see in play already, a few situations lead to a dozen emotions, but most only lead to 1-3 right now, as it's all done by hand; but personality has a large effect on initial emotion sometimes.)  For the new resurfacing mechanism, it takes the type of emotion vs. some of the facets to see if it should be allowed back up.  So for instance, if somebody has a high anxiety propensity, their mortified, worried, nervous etc. memories will come up more often.  If you turn anxiety propensity down, you'll see those particular ones less in the long-term memory system. If you turned somebody's anxiety propensity all the way down to zero, they shouldn't have horror memories in the long term at all; however, this means they will also never process them (I'm not sure what I think of this, but it's a side effect of the current system; no struggle, no growth.)

It also uses anger propensity, hate propensity, depression propensity (both high and low), cheerfulness, love, lust, vengefulness, excitement-seeking, leisurely vs. frenetic, envy propensity, sense of gratitude, sense of humor and pride, based on which emotion is trying to resurface.  A few emotions can't currently be blocked, like nostalgia, amazement, and ambivalence, as I didn't immediately find proper pairings.  Values do not currently effect what resurfaces, as it is meant to be more visceral, but values can be changed by the process.

Stress vulnerability doesn't come up based on the emotion type, but only afterward during the actual stress addition.  So a high anxiety person will have certain thoughts resurface a lot, and process them, but they won't be damaged by them if they aren't vulnerable to stress; this fact isn't reflected well in the thought text.

1. Of the pre myth and magic update feature candidates remaining which ones if any of them do you think will enhance the first pass of the myth and magic update? For example one recently added feature that might enhance the first pass is being able to see what our adventurers are thinking which may be affected by magic.
2. What types of mages do you think will be available to play as in the first pass of the myth and magic update and which do you think will have to wait till the second pass? Also I'd like to hear your reasoning for this answer.
3. In the myth and magic update will new types structures be generated for housing magical artifacts that aren't directly tied to an existing civilization? For example a temple created by gods to house a magic staff.
4. In terms of the magic items that don't seem to be artificially made such as the example of the cosmic egg pieces how do you plan to handle their placement assuming there's no artificial structure made to house them? Can an adventurer just be walking through the woods and find a powerful magic item just lying on the ground?

1. Hill sites, sieges, mounts/pets, parties, off-site adv squads, better quests, villains, strongholds...  so, all of it pretty much?  He he he.  They were chosen for a reason.

2. I haven't committed here because I don't know.  It's going to involve a lot of interplay with the existing codebase, and I can't guess how that's going to play out in most cases from this distance, so it's important to maintain some flexibility and not over-promise before I start.

3. PatrikLundell mentioned vaults, and other places will certainly come in myths.

4. Yeah, that's possible; but part of the hope is that if they are that common, they'd be integrated into every nearby civilization as well, so 'powerful' would be relative.  Civilizations in world gen already use their local environment, and this would (hopefully) just be an extension of that in many cases.

At its current state, how feasible would it be to convert biome generation into a raw-based system? Have you considered this in the past?

PatrikLundell addressed all the basics -- this would require some scripting or special tags and would be a bit difficult, for the natural biomes, as it isn't just based on rainfall, drainage, temperature etc., but also a few other factors.  On the other hand, supernatural regions and so forth are going to be drifting both proc and raw-ward as we get into the magical stuff.

Do you plan to expand adventurer banditry? (Right now when you join a bandit gang the bandit leader basically acts just like a lord and gives you the same tasks as a lord which don't always make much sense for a bandit)

I'm not sure if anything will happen here until the distant crime/justice stuff, and whatever economy exists by that time would also help and might lead to some precursors on the thievery spectrum.  Certain subsets are possible earlier, ones just based on violence or taking over a town.

Can non-dwarf citizens of your civilization come to your fort as migrants? If not, why can't they?

If I recollect, this was turned off just so people wouldn't have to deal with the sizing of clothing and so forth, as we didn't know if that would work at all.  I haven't really followed up on this part of it.  Other than that, there's a slight immersion issue that maybe should wait for a bit of exposition?  It doesn't seem as serious now as previously.  But it should explain to new players why they are only getting elves and goblins if that's in fact what happens in a given world, as it would be very confusing otherwise, given the title of the game.

Farther into the horizon:

Do you like the idea of actually generating the music that dwarves make and playing it during gameplay? Do you think using tools like Magenta make it feasible?

Right now however:

Will visitors and diplomats be able to start trouble? Will we be able to punish visitors and maybe demand reparations from a diplomats civilization?

I don't think I'm ever going to try to produce actual audio (or longer texts.)  Other priorities feel more important.  It feels more like a graphics category, although it would be cool and fun to play with, judging from bits of it in the past I've done elsewhere.

We don't have near term plans for that sort of thing.  The villains stuff is the closest to complex or interesting ties in the nearer term.

What happened to DF talk? Was it more that it's difficult to organize with you and rainseeker/captain being busy or is it more that you ran out of questions and topics to discuss?

There are a lot of things at play; mainly, we got overambitious about what we wanted to do with it a while ago, since we were out of simple topics, and then I got cold feet on, for instance, trying to interview roguelike developers and so forth, as I'd certainly screw up the audio, which is fine when it is just us losing our own recorded two hours, but not other people's.  Then we didn't really have other simple ideas, and others were too complex for what we actually had time and energy for, and nothing has really moved on it.  All on Zach and I, not Capn/rainseeker.

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?
2. Will it be possible in some worlds for civilizations to create magic buildings for use defending or improving the well being of their sites? For example a magic savvy civilization might make a tower to put a force field around their sites to keep unwanted visitors out or a tower that improves crop yield in their farms?
3. In the first pass of the myth and magic update might some forms of magic be affected by what an adventurer is feeling? For example one magic might be more effective if an adventurer is happy and less if they are sad?
4. Might our adventurer's relationships with npcs in the first pass of the myth and magic update affect how effective some forms of magic are? For example a harming spell might be more effective against someone you really hate?

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.

2+3+4. For each of these, it's all fair, and there are related current structures and in particular some interaction effects already in place that are close neighbors, but it's not clear what'll happen first.

1. Since the magic update plans to include the possibility of entire regions changing due to magical influence, would it be possible to apply this system to simulate more gradual, natural regional changes? For example, desertification, rivers changing course, glaciers advancing and receding, etc. (this question might have been asked before, if it was, feel free to disregard it)

2. Currently, worldgen adventurers seem to be able to recover artifacts from ruined sites. Would it be possible to expand their behavior to also include the generalized ability to behave as looters and steal regular items? Right now, it seems that a site can be abandoned for a thousand years and it'll still have all of it's fine steel equipment neatly piled up in the barracks, untouched.

3. Is some kind of ruin overhaul in the plans for the next few releases in general, in the sense of actually simulating decay through the ages? Right now, they just feel like ordinary sites, just without any inhabitants.

4. Will world-ending artifacts be a thing? How would they be balanced?

1. As stated above, biomes specifically are a bit tricky, but, yeah, there would be similarities in how it might work.  There isn't much of an issue with just changing the data, since it is all just sitting there, really, but some of the knock-on effects to already-generated smaller scale maps might be somewhat uncomfortable or totally broken, so there needs to be some care, and this is compounded by some of the biome interlinks (as opposed to special magical properties; though I imagine that'll have its own weird problems.)

2. There aren't really regular items to steal in a satisfactory way.  We have the worldgen economic stockpiles, which are static and not added to by post worldgen production, and we have the tribute, which is more abstract.  This isn't a system I want to add too many tendrils to without just doing the economy properly.

3. There is supposed to be moss and the degradation of structures, but perhaps the timers are off, especially in human-style sites (as opposed to forts), and even in forts, the types of constructions aren't the sort that degrade correctly.  So it's in a sort of weird spot; there are some mechanisms, but they aren't properly applied or broad enough.  I'm not sure what we'll see.  "for the next few release" I doubt anything here.

4. We've talked a bit in the past about world ending disasters and how that generally is a problem if it happens off site and you have no say in it.  We're not against it in theory, but there has to be some care and stage-setting involved.  I imagine some people will just want to run with it, and in the silliest case, the world would end before world gen is even over.  I'm cool with that, if those settings are selected; you could read the legends and be edified about folly and inevitability.  However, I imagine the default setting would be more along the lines of "must be public multi-year plot by villainous serial expositor which can also be put back in the jar for a while after it's obvious what's going on, but these pre-end effects can be very gnarly" or something.

Now that memories can change a dwarf's personality facets, what kinds of changes will we most likely see? Will specific memories be much more likely to change facets tied to the kind of memory, or will it be more random? Will this happen at all during world-gen?

We'll have to see what people see more of!  I don't really have any idea which are more frequent.  The changes are linked to the specific type of event; it isn't purely random.  There's an argument for the pure randomness, and it would be a lot faster to implement as I had to go through lists of hundreds of items one by one, but right now I like the feeling of having some clue as to why a facet might be linked to a given change.  This might loosen up if things get too samey, though instead of full randomization I'd prefer to add more information about the change on other axes.

Will the player be able to become the master and hire there own apprentices.

I have no timeline for the adventurer here.  Naturally, it would be cool and we've thought about it in a few contexts (not just the magic release.)

Hi Toady, a question about the myth generator (not that you were lacking any).

Do you intend to allow the forces / tools / aspects of deities to be personified?
Like the loom used to shape fate being both a loom and an individual.
If so, how do you think you'll make it reliably interesting?

These are reasonable things, but I'm not sure what's going to happen the first time through.  We're going to code things with an eye toward having multiple manifestations for the same X, but like the current soul array that has been in every creature for many years, it's not clear when it'll be used at full power.  But yeah, we do have a number of scenarios we definitely want to support, and deity manifestations and intelligent items of various kinds are among them.

Is there any plans in the near future to be able to get skilled craftsmen in the visitors who can petition to stay for work?

Aside from the same-civ immigrants, who are often skilled?  There isn't really a class of wandering workers at this point, and most of them are non-historical, but I imagine forms of immigration will open up more and more, especially with the new near-fort settlements.

I was going over the development page and got extremely excited when I read "Bringing back lost deities/titans". I then realized that this specific item is under the section for Creation Myths. Still a really neat thing I look forward to but it got me wondering;

  Are there plans or thoughts on "Bringing back lost deities/titans" as something achievable in fortress mode? I've done a little digging and cant find if there are plans (or not) for major 'ritual'-type goals for fortress mode.

Would such rituals be possible for NPCs in addition to players? The dev log seemed kinda vague on that. IMO magic-based cults attempting to resurrect lost titans of the ancient world would be really cool villains for adventurers to face on occasion.

Shonai_Dweller mentioned that this sort of change is an in-game goal, and that rituals would be likely in both modes.  This is correct, and I wanted to elaborate a bit.  As usual, not everything will straddle the mode transitions completely at first, but having post-worldgen change is one of the few first release guarantees.  Here, as elsewhere, and now extended, 'modes' mean (I think) 'creation up to having a map', 'historical worldgen with maps', 'post-worldgen off-screen play' (your squads or others, in the two resolutions of fully abstract and partially-loaded site maps at the adv travel scale), 'player fortress', 'player adventurer' and 'on-screen AI'.  The game has always been spotty about making those modes fully consistent, for a variety of reasons (some of them compelling in the Not Enough Time or Resources sense, but often just flukes and oversights.)  The goal is to support rituals everywhere.  It's also useful that your fortress can now act off-site, so you might still have a chance to perform a ritual that requires you to go far afield.

Cults currently exist in the form of vampire cults, is it planned for there to be "cults" formed around titans and such that will use the myth system and actually actively try to bring back their masters, there was a threetoe story about this

http://bay12games.com/dwarves/story/tt_wedding.html
"Wedding of Doom"

Is this something we can be pretty sure we will be seeing in the magic update
Will vampire cults try to bring back their masters?
Or will these things be kept at an individual rather then collective level. (eg the cult wont work together towards this common goal but instead individuals will try to do it on their own)
 
One more question (yes i know ive been on a bit of a question spree )

After seeing a weird screenshot on the adventure mode subforum I have a observation: Bogeymen no longer make any sense now that individual AI adventurers are wandering around taking on quests for artifacts and killing things and not being attacked by bogeymen (it also means if say you and an AI both had a quest for an artifact that was hidden in an old swamp the AI has a better chance (unfair advantage)  at finding it since they dont need to stop in a town). Any plans to rework that mechanic for it to make more sense and so that human players are no longer the only adventurers actually effected by this. (also for those who dont know, yes AI adventurers now take on artifact quests just like players while you are playing)

Part of the point of (possibly) getting to the villains before magic is to get these gears turning a bit.  Both individuals and groups should have a role to play.  So yeah, hopefully we'll have some good stuff here!  Not guaranteeing anything particular here on the first pass, of course.

Yeah, it hasn't been handled consistently and it has always been kind of a problem.  Something will happen by the first magic release, but I'm not sure about before then.

If the primary method of founding the new government if from the handful of soldiers you send, outside the defined next release (as the devlog explains, thin for good measure) would you be able to manually "claim" empty settlements using civilian populations as a peaceful option given that the player can already send missions out to destroyed settlements to scavenge?

May or may not be worth fighting a resident dragon angrily guarding its clutch and loot who razed it in the first place, who knows? Im aware it sounds a tinge suggestiony but i guess its virtually similar to the reclaimation methods we have currently and what is already proposed so i may as well ask for the sake of picking your brains and what intention you might have going forward with the remaining hill dwarf goals. And i guess finally..

Will there be any inssurection interactions with your imposed group on the existing population?

It doesn't currently work that way, as the site administration is a raid option.  For the 'explore' case, it's not present.  However, reclaim squads are definitely much closer to being a reality now, as are player-driven site foundations from scratch beyond the initial embark.

I don't have any additional information on insurrections yet.

[Max™]

That ars geekery picture is far too cute, from one grown man to another.

Honestly just waiting and geeking out over the latest "let's make minecarts, whoops physics" with the "lets fix memories, oh hey character arcs!" thing.

[Shonai_Dweller]

That ars geekery picture is far too cute, from one grown man to another.

Honestly just waiting and geeking out over the latest "let's make minecarts, whoops physics" with the "lets fix memories, oh hey character arcs!" thing.

Don't forget the, let's make a cute dig-dug style side project, oh hey 30 year ultra-detailed fantasy world simulator project.

[DG]

Thanks for the write-up.

[clinodev]

Ah, Ars Magica. I spent many a weekend ridding medieval Manchester of one foul fiend or another, and ridiculous hours on an Ars LP MUD later on. Such a great game!

[Eschar]

Technically speaking, what are the obstacles in the way of implementing a "world-gen unpause" button?

[Shonai_Dweller]

Technically speaking, what are the obstacles in the way of implementing a "world-gen unpause" button?

limegreen if that's a question you want answered.
Although, there is a detailed technical reply somewhere which Toady gave previously. Just seeing if I can dig it out.

That is, if by "unpause" you mean "return to fast worldgen to skip several years". Worldgen is always "unpaused", it's kind of the whole point of DF.

--edit
OK, here's the answer from this thread, but it's based on something from a video as I thought.

Here's the video (Progression Mechanics Conference, September 2017).
https://youtu.be/L67Xb4tgVv8
(It's all interesting, but restarting worldgen starts at about 1:01:00).

Here's my question about it:

Quote from: Shonai_Dweller
In your talk today, you started to talk about the major difficulties that you have to overcome and concluded that skipping another 1000 years after playing for a bit (returning to worldgen) is 'pretty hard'. I certainly think you're right in that lots of people want to see this someday, but is it something you think you're going to attempt one day or by 'hard' do you mean you just can't conceive of how you might even attempt such a thing?

Nah, we might try it.  The pure dumping of all the refined post w.g. data and going back to world gen isn't the hard part, it's more choosing which data to dump and doing that gracefully or in stages (I think I might have mentioned the problem of starting a 1000 year advance and then bailing out after 5 years, which would leave a shell of your former world if the data is dumped).  Well, the pure dump isn't *easy*, some care must be taken, but having some stark button like "I commit to a 100 year advance" is certainly in the realm of not-impossible things.

[Rockphed]

Hail the Toad for blessing us with answers and continued development!