Not sure if these questions are too fine-grain for where you guys are at in thinking about magic, but any insights on where you want to take these systems is appreciated.
1. You've mentioned sphere-associated regions replacing good and evil regions. Can we expect ALL of the existing spheres to be represented in there (not in the same world necessarily, but all in the pool that the game chooses sphere regions from)? Some seem obvious like death-associated regions having the current evil region effects of reanimation or other nasty weather, some spheres could lead to cool things like dream-associated oceans, but some spheres don't seem to make as much sense for this system. A forest associated with "oaths" or a desert associated with "rumors" are hard to come up with magical or otherwise interesting effects for. Can we expect less interesting spheres to be omitted? Or do you guys think you're creative enough to be able to come up with interesting enough effects for all of them?
2. On a similar note, are some magical artifacts going to be similarly sphere associated? Will it be possible to have a revelry-associated magical scepter, or an agriculture-associated armor stand, for example? There's a whole bunch of spheres so it seems crazy-ambitious to try and come up with world region and artifact effects for all of them.
3. You've talked about changing the underworld into something completely different on a per-world basis, based on procedural myth stuff. Are there plans to try to preserve the "digging too deep" ending of the game between worlds in spite of this? I always kind of liked playing devil's minesweeper.
4. Since there are going to be new origin myths for different species, where does that leave the relationship between goblins and demons? Are the narratives just going to be twisted to fit the current status quo (ex: goblins were created when the gods cursed the dwarves, then a demon grew from the primordial fungus pits and enslaved the goblins) or is it going to be more dynamic, where goblins might not have had a demon master at all depending on how they came to be? If demons aren't necessarily a package deal with goblin civs anymore, might intelligent demons be able to manifest in the normal world during mythgen of certain worlds through some other means?
5. Since regions and magical systems are now going to change dynamically over time, is the myths update going to include a way to have a world re-enter world-gen after you finish a fort, in order to generate more history before playing again? Seems like a lot of effort to make things dynamic is going to waste if the average playtime on a single world doesn't last long enough to see those effects progress much. It would also be cool to see how wars and civilizations change over the long term based on the actions you made in your fort.
6. You've talked about players having to make decisions about whether they want to use an artifact, given the harmful side effects they have, like a staff of fire that pulls your fortress closer to the fire plane and causes everything to light on fire. How do you plan to communicate information about their uses and risks to the player? In some cases where the downsides aren't too horrible and it's not too hard to figure out what's going on, just making the player experiment and try using it could be fun, but the stronger the negative effects are and bigger the consequences, the less likely players will risk it at all. It's not worth playing with the Flaming Obsidian Mug of Lebesnóton if there's a chance it might fill your fortress with magma because you don't know what it does in advance.
7. How might players actually use magic in fortress mode? You've shown screenshots of the myth gen describing how dwarves could sing or speak a word or whatever to make some kind of magic happen, but right now we can't force a dwarf to sing or speak a word on command in fort mode. Will we be able to control when and where a particular dwarf uses a particular kind of magic? If some magic artifacts are clothing, will we get functionality to force a non-milita dwarf to wear a particular piece of clothing as well?
8. You've talked about religious sects forming in your fort and demanding certain things, like nobles. Is this system going to be integrated with temples or magic? I'm imaging a system where building a grand, high value cathedral for a cult will increase the success of their worshiping and rituals, improving your relations with a deity, which in turn could grant you strange moods to produce magical artifacts, blessings of good harvest/success in battle or other such benefits.
9. Similar note, right now dwarves can worship megabeasts like gods, presumably to appease them so they chill out and stop destroying everybody’s cities. This doesn’t actually do anything at the moment though. Might this relationship be expanded upon? Do you think we might actually be able to keep forgotten beasts at bay by worshiping them? Or maybe even convince them to attack your fort’s enemies? Or do you guys like the one-sided worship as it stands? It is kind of fun to think of dwarves desperately trying to appease the eight-legged bismuth porcupine that doesn’t care about what the dwarves are doing at all, and just wants to kill everything.
10. You’ve mentioned how worlds without magic will still have origin stories, they would just be fictional. Does this mean that worlds which DO have magic might also have fictional elements to their myths? Such as false gods, magical rites which do nothing, artifacts which are said to have certain magic effects but actually do nothing, etc. Would the players have an easy way to distinguish between fake magic and real magic, or would experimentation be necessary?
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Topic: Future of the Fortress (Read 3134880 times)