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[Egan_BW]

Ideally the result of that would be your dwarves deciding it's not worth it and wandering off, but that would require non-player-ordered emigration mechanics.

[Dozebôm Lolumzalěs]

"Exit rights" would make the dwarves seem much more individual and self-protective than the current system, where dwarves only act sanely if you play nicely and it's otherwise as if an uncaring hive mind takes over once they enter the fortress. As awesome as the crazy old legends are, most of them are absolutely insane from an in-world perspective.

The player could still keep them from leaving, but then it could be explained with "the mayor locked all the doors and so the populace couldn't escape", so the immersion isn't broken.

[Slozgo Luzma]

Stay strong Toady! Rest if you need to, or take a break. Your health is the most important thing. The heat sucks especially if you don't have AC (I live in a desert in the northern hemisphere). Some things:

1) I know AC is expensive but some cities have utilities assistance programs that can help pay for AC? They are often under-advertised so many people don't know about them. For instance in Phoenix, AZ, there are neighborhoods where as little as 6% of people have AC in a city that reaches 125 F in the summer, but the city offers a utilities assistance program that people don't know about.

2) Make sure that you have someone who checks on you: most heat-related hospitalizations occur with people who are socially isolated during a heat wave and don't have someone to check up on them if they pass out.

3) Stay hydrated!! If you even feel thirsty you're already lost 5-10% of your needed water mass. You should drink water before you even feel thirsty, and drink a lot.

4) It's not weird to walk around in your underwear running fans everywhere and covering yourself in cold water if no one can see you do it.

[Toady One]

1- Can we expect from agents/inflitrators, at any point of the developement, to act as if they had knowledge of the consequences of their actions? Or asked in another way: what tools will these characters have to identify appropriate ways of acting? Will we see things like some traitor opening our gates to an invading army, trying to pull whatever lever that should not be touched or realeasing dangereous creatures from cages? What about all at the same time (like, aiming to create a diversion)?

2- Leaving aside practical examples, what limits do you expect these tools actually will have for this next release?

Keeping in mind what you said elsewhere about not wanting to give too much away:

Given that vampires and grudge-holders can currently file false witness reports, and vampires hide their supernatural physical attributes when they aren't in mortal danger, I suspect other such are on the table.

There are lots of limits on what we can do; I'm not quite sure what you mean.  The main limits for this sort of thing are time and the cpu, but beyond that, spatial analysis and pattern analysis can be tricky.  Take your lever example:  thinking about animal release is easy, identifying an animal release trap that would just kill the lever puller (which has been set up by the clever player) is harder -- for this specific example, which we'd naturally been considering (given gremlins), we had thought about having the treacherous dwarf prioritize levers which had been pulled previously.  That's knowledge which it would be fair for them to have, would still possibly gum up the works, and also be less risky for them.  The downside there would be it cutting out many levers we'd want pulled.  For invasion gates, the spatial analysis can be tricky, but a simple component test on a soldier vs. the other side of the lever's door would be sufficient for many cases.  It just has to work sometimes for it to be good story fodder; it would be additionally good if the failed cases aren't overplayed with e.g. dramatic announcements.  We'll be feeling it out as we go.

So, given it seems you can encounter non-questors taking the identity of criminal, and it seems they might not always actually have a criminal record, what even is the justification for them being labelled criminals?

I have encountered NPCs who don't APPEAR to be artifact hunters, but have nonetheless assumed an identity as a self-labelled criminal, nor do they end up with an association with local criminal gangs.

They are criminals the same way peddlers are peddlers.  It's abstractly true, but they don't do anything yet.  This is the case for all the adventure civilian dwarf-style professions as well, except for a certain few that actually contributed to stockpiles in world gen (and no longer contribute once world gen is complete.)

With future world generation changes making it more fantastic - less Earthlike - will things such as randomized biomes be possible? e.g. could you have a more erratic world that has fiery swamps -associated with Fire, Muck, and Peace- full of unicorns and satyrs, or a forest -associated with Healing, Darkness, and Defomority- that periodically has healing rain in addition to ogres and procgenned monsters?

Manveru Taurënér: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7822112#msg7822112

So on the case of these deities/titans/ect being physical, would it be possible for one to migrate/petition to join a fort or integrate itself into a civ in some form phsyically (like becoming king/queen of the dwarves) or even start up their own civ with themselves at the head of it?

Tinnucorch: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7822142#msg7822142
Rockphed: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7822179#msg7822179

Yes, we used to have those impersonators more regularly, which doesn't exactly imply the real thing would ever happen, but it's certainly reasonable, given a deity with the proper body and motivations.

Is it possible that the villain update might bring a unique purpose to the venoms by allowing schemes to involve a poisoning of a target or the fort's food supply?

Death Dragon: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7822765#msg7822765

To what extent do worldgen/mission battles currently take gear into account? I understand that it's done at least in some basic sense, but does it just compare skill/quality/material or does it do some more complex calculations? For example, will a dwarf with a copper hammer have a good chance against an armoured opponent like he does in fort mode or will he lose because copper is a "bad" metal? And if I mod some overpowered 1-shot-kill weapon, will that be reflected in the battles or will it treat it like every other weapon?

Shonai_Dweller: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7823501#msg7823501

It doesn't do the same calculations that it does in in-play battles, as that would be a cpu killer, but it does use numbers based on the edge and impact fracture, I believe, for weapons and armor items that were worn on map exit.  It can certainly be improved, but it can't become much more complicated at the risk of losing speed.  Once we can finally move the camera to view squad battles, this won't matter anymore for the important fort-related battles.

For next release, will do concept villain influence in dwarf relationships? Currently, in fortress mode is frequent that there were friendship or love between dwarfs, but it is difficult seeying grudge or hostility among themselves. I believe that is a good oportunitue for exploring or adding some negative traits to relationships.

This thinking carries me to another cuestion; are or will are relationships mechanics and villain mechanics tightly united? Or do they got separated treatment in DF?

PatrikLundell: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7823545#msg7823545
Shonai_Dweller: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7823835#msg7823835

As far as negative relationships, I'm not sure how much we'll be adding any new ones in the fort, but certain of the new links formed out in the world will involve them.  They might be harder to bring over to the fort if they involve aspects of law or business which aren't yet simulated there.

How's life?

I'm recovering!

Do raids take into account creature size/growth? Cave dragons are hatched the size of foxes and grow until they're 1000 year old, when they are huge killing machines. Will my small, young cave dragons fight like full-grown cave dragons off map?

Yeah, it looks at the age in days of the historical figure and plots it on the caste growth line.

Old version of question addressed by:
KittyTac: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7823992#msg7823992
ZM5: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7824180#msg7824180
Putnam: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7824462#msg7824462

Having experienced quite a lot of rather exotic ones, and being a programmer myself, I'm really passionate about bugs in Dwarf Fortress whenever I get back into it. What is the best way that I can help you fix them? Is posting on Mantis kind of the limit of what is useful for you/possible for me, or are there tools I could use to narrow down causes?

PatrikLundell: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7824062#msg7824062

In addition, there have been cases where people have isolated causes based on diving into binaries and memory and that sort of thing, as the game is running I guess, and that's been helpful, but is quite beyond the limits of simple reporting and enters heroic territory.  Also Patrik is correct that bugs that look easier to fix are fixed faster, generally, though I will spill a lot of time into crash/etc. bugs regardless of how patchy the reports are if there's any kind of hope of reproducing and/or fixing them.

Have you ever considered chopping the title down to just "Dwarf Fortress"?

Not that I would recommend it or think it's a good idea, I'm just curious if you ever actually had thought about it, and what those thoughts were.

Yeah, we've considered it from time to time.  It's certainly the most reasonable name for the game at this point.  Mostly inertia, I guess?  Concern for Wikipedia editors?

1. In the prototype Myth Generator that was shown a while back, many of the innate magic systems involved the user drawing a Force that their race was linked to into themselves to use magic. Could an innate magic user use the Force as "fuel" for other magic outside of their innate capabilities?
2. Could another wizard seek to use objects/powers/whatever linked to the Force to manipulate it while it is "inside" of an innate wizard?
3. Would magic/soul eating critters be more attracted to innate magic users? More so when they are actually using their powers?
4. Kind of an extension of 1 and 2, could an innate wizard fuel other people's magic using a force?
5. Would a character channeling a force innately experience properties like weaknesses based on the force, outside of corruption? (like how were beasts have vulnerabilities while transformed)
6. Could a character try to find ways to draw power out of divine artifacts and whatnot, in a similar fashion to 1, 2, and 4?
7. Could supernatural devices be altered/corrupted?
8. If a race has some form of ancestor worship or something like that, and they are descended from a precursor race, could spirits of the precursor race show up alongside "normal" ancestors?
9. If people have innate magic from a supernatural ancestor, would those powers be self-contained, or would you have (at least in some situations) powers channeled from, and therefor reliant upon, the ancestor?
10. Would innate powers from an ancestor be based on what the ancestor can do, or would new powers be generated? (based on the mixing of the bloodlines or whatnot)
11. Could innate powers from an ancestor be extracted from blood or other bodily bits?
12. Would magical bloodlines be considered "blessed" or "cursed" based on the origin of the powers? (that guy is descended from a god we don't like, shun him!)
Edit:
b1. Will "sleeping" creatures be able to act during myth gen without/before waking up. Like their sleeping consciousness can do stuff outside the body, possibly with or without them realizing it?
b2. In the myth gen, the concept of souls as a microcosm was unveiled. That made me wonder, could the "souls" of some supernatural creatures (demons, spirits, ect.) function as "mini" planes of existence? I understand it would be a while before traveling to other planes isn't in the near future, but could there still be situations where a creature can store things like other souls, or even physical objects within themselves?
b3. Related to b2, could some creatures/races be created as an embodiment/manifestation of a given plane of existence?

1. Like two different mana pools that can feed into a set of common spells?  It would need to be accounted for and there's no guarantee of that at first in generated systems, but it would be supported I suspect.
2. The prototype had states of linkage with the various forces, and those were prerequisites of certain spells.  Having that be a prereq for somebody else's spells is much like #1.
3. Possibly unwanted attention from supernatural powers is a common side effect and I expect things along these lines.
4. Group magic is a topic, but I haven't thought much about the specifics of implementation.  It's possible this would be supported; I'm not sure it would be generated at first.
5. No specific plans here yet.
6. This seems likely, but maybe after a first pass; there's a constellation of reagents and charges (e.g. wands) and crafting that points to underlying systems where certain magic may end up being transferrable or exhaustible to power other effects, but as with many things, it's unclear how this will be expressed in the initial systems.
7. On the table, but it's reliant on having them in the first place, which'll be the initial goal.
8. Hmm, by the numbers I feel this would get missed for non-historical people (on index comparison), but it also involves understanding exactly what the transition point looks like -- if there are parent linkages in historical figures crossing through the races, the precursors would get picked up naturally.  So famous people would be more likely to get it, as the code for families currently stands.  However, doing half-X etc. people has been notoriously difficult for us, so it does depend on the implementation.
9. It's quite similar to the deity/priest question.  In some models, the deity is capricious or requires some kind of 'conscious' participation.  In others, the deity is only nominally involved.  The structure here probably carry over to other systems with any personified supernatural enabler.
10. If a bloodline is mixed, you'd have two whole sets of ancestors, so I imagine you'd get multiple power sets automatically, but it depends on the specifics of how it worked in the first place, which would be highly variable, as in #9.
11. This seems like a reasonable system, but not clear on such specifics for the first pass.
12. What people think of magic generally is very likely, what specific variables they'll look at and the variety of opinions they'll hold is more dev-time-dependent.
b1. This is a common-enough thing, I think, and dreams come up in the prototype.  We'll have to see if that language survives or what implementations we get at first though.
b2/b3. Yeah, this is the idea.  The stranger the better once the universe works this way.  It's the sort of cosmology computers can handle well until you create a loop or delete something unexpected, then we can all enjoy freezes and crashes together, like a sugar-fueled cryomancer.

Are you ever afraid of disappointing people who see the Myth and Magic update as a "you can do literally anything!" game similar to what happened with games like Spore and No Man's Sky?
The update has been planned for such a long time and spawned quite the sizeable amount of questions and speculations which probably built up pretty high expectations in people.

Would you say you mainly develop DF for yourself or for the players or is it an even split?

Nah, I'm not worried about hype.  We do a lot of anti-hype and expectation setting in the logs and here in FotF, and I don't think things are out of control.

It's too complicated now for me to tease those motivations apart.  What would be a good thought experiment?  If everybody wanted something I didn't want, would I put it in?  Even that needs some more detail, as I've put in usability stuff in the past I wouldn't personally use, as I recall, and don't think that answers the question.  It's more like...  everybody wanting something that runs contrary to the vision?  When have I ever done that...  I don't remember.  But it's hard to judge who wants what anyway, and a lot of the discrepancies can be solved by modding (e.g. goblins eating, etc.)

How do you guys not get absolutely overwhelmed with the amount of ideas and contents this game has/will have? I'm developing my own roguelike and I get really overwhelmed with my own ideas.

A game will pretty much always have more admittable ideas than you can work on (not that all of them are strictly improvements.)  Learning to prioritize, working on the best small-enough chunks, is an important skill, one we've obviously screwed up repeatedly.  Still, we spend a lot of time organizing, categorizing, deciding where certain feature pushes fit in and how they layer.  Lots of paper tablets used up around here.

Now that Fortress Mode is much more connected to the rest of the world, are you planning to have dwarves leave player fortresses if conditions get too bad/it no longer has a good profit/population ratio? Many real-word cities died out not because they were attacked, but because trade routes dried up and people simply left.

Of course, there would have to be ways for players to make sure certain dwarves were the least likely to leave -- perhaps dwarves that were very happy or made lots of money for the fortress would be much more likely to stay.

I recall mentioning that this is becoming more and more on the table in response to a question a month or two ago, and I think that's still true.  It's almost a matter of finding a time to do it rather than needing any large features at this point.

I understand that reconciling fort mode and adventure mode having different time scales is a current ongoing project that is being considered tentatively. However, I just noticed that there might be an issue with it, particularly concerning the Economy update on the menu some few years for now. Do you happen to have any ideas on how to short term or long term approach an issue that will likely happen: that adventure mode food consumption would be much more rapid than dwarf/legend mode?

Yeah, 'considered tentatively' is still almost too strong.  I don't think the time scales can be reconciled, and I think it will always cause problems.  With food, world gen already uses the adv mode consumption level for all sites, and I think that's a good enough way to continue.  This means a player fortress by itself can't become a food exporter, but that's thematically fine.  The issue maybe then becomes having abundant food outside the fort, enough for the dwarves to live on easily even in barren areas, and not having to pay/tax as much as you normally would to overcome potential starvation, and having food import be way more practical than hunting or farming.  I don't think this is a major issue, though it's clearly not perfect.

Where will we see these (tacky) villainous names show up?  I'm pretty sure we will see them if we start unraveling plots, but will we also see them when a death squad comes to put an end to our interference?  Will we hear of their alias when told of troubles ("Bloodmist the Evil sends his goons to harass us, but none know where he hails from" type of conversation)?

We're going to try to work them in all over in the exposition, yeah.  The name by itself shouldn't jump you up the villain chain at all, without additional evidence, and it's important to use them when we can.

A question that came to mind regarding the mounts - do you think you'll implement a token that'd make it so that a creature cannot be mounted by other creatures past a certain size?

We have to do something at some point, though sizes have been a weak point of DF from the beginning and I don't anticipate getting to it this time.

You mentioned a dwarven mayor "unusually obsessed with intrigue."  Does this arise from the current personality traits and values, or a new factor?  Will the most intrigue-obsessed individuals carry out plans even when they don't care about the objective, just for the sake of plotting and scheming?

Villains can potentially infiltrate your fort by recruiting citizens, and even officials, but will masterminds also be able to arise within the fort on their own initiative?  Could a sneaky, ambitious dwarf establish and build a world-spanning conspiracy right under the player's nose, or will the network always start off-site (unless created by the player, of course)?

This was based off the current stuff.  Values 'cunning' is convenient here, as well as anxiety and not trusting people.  I don't yet have it as a specific hobby.  Yeah, intrigue-obsessed people don't need an excuse.

Hmm, I can't tell you if one of your own dwarves could become a mastermind yet, as I haven't implemented the on-site agent behavior.  It's actually possible that it could be possible, by accident, as it were.  The dwarf in question would certainly be in the 'villain pool', and the recruiting code would also be active (as on-site agents will need it.)  Technically, that's almost all they would need.  The missing element would be the ability to send people away, as we don't let your dwarves leave of their own accord yet, so they might become reliant on travelers.  Once dwarves can leave, that restriction would be lifted.

Will all villains have "evil" motivations, or will some of them mean well? If so, will they still use the same tacky names as normal villains?

To build off this: If the good folks aren't going to use those kinds of names... CAN they? Please?

I don't think there'll be any altruistic schemes to better the community right now.  It'll depend more on how you interpret motives like revenge.  When the general title system gets expanded we'll probably see more of what you are looking for name-wise.

In the army arc, if an off-map army is sent to defend against an invader and loses, will they retreat to your fortress, any nearby settlement, or just sort of disappear?

They will likely return home if they aren't captured or destroyed, the way it works now.

What is your opinion on balancing DF?

Death Dragon: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7833129#msg7833129

I really do need more to work with.  What are we even balancing here?  It's not a competitive game and there aren't a bunch of classes/characters like in a MOBA or something.  The new magic systems will intentionally alter most aspects of vanilla balance.  At the same time, we care about getting, e.g. material data correct.  Certain weapons like whips seem like they should be way weaker and completely impractical, but there's a certain role for 'heroic individualized weapons' in this genre, in which case some bit of artificial balance might be preferred.  Having history always turn out the same way because one of the civs is way better than others is a potential concern and currently a bit messed up, but the tools we use for that are partially in the magic category anyway.

What is your opinion on playing (and starting as) important historical figures such as rulers and priests? Should there be a setting for that? Will the setting default to OFF?

When we tab to a party member, will we be able to control them directly, or simply give them general orders? Will we be able to "switch" to them?

Assuming we are still concerned about the player abusing their ability to switch to historical characters by taking control of an enemy leader and committing suicide or intentionally making bad decisions, making the player "unlock" historical figures by gaining their loyalty or admiration as an earlier adventurer could be a way of balancing that, by making sure the player has some "investment" in the story of that group before allowing them to possess its leaders.

If powerful historical figures are playable by default, will there be any method of preventing players from taking control of an enemy leader and committing suicide or intentionally making bad decisions, or is that just not a concern?

Shonai_Dweller: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7833147#msg7833147

Yeah, I'm sure I've addressed elsewhere how this ought to be a world setting.  Defaults are complicated and I don't have a strong opinion at this point.  I can understand not wanting to be tempted to ruin a world, say, but there's also a richness to certain implementations of the feature that shouldn't be ignored; not bouncing between rulers to screw things up (though that can be fun), but playing, say, a human civ leader until death/end of rule, then playing a goblin civ leader until death/end of rule, etc, seeing how things turn out and play off each other; that's the kind of fascinating experience we want to encourage people to explore.  Not all characters need to be fresh in the world.  That said, taking over rulers is the hardest case, as it requires a lot of features we're only just now getting into and won't be far along with for years and years.

Shonai_Dweller: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7839823#msg7839823
Putnam: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7839824#msg7839824
IndigoFenix (op): http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7839846#msg7839846
Death Dragon: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7840864#msg7840864
KittyTac: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7840870#msg7840870

I do think the loyalty/party-induction method isn't a bad middle-ground setting between "no takeovers" and "take over anybody," but I think they should all be permitted as settings.  If somebody wants to take over anybody, I don't think there should be restrictions on what they can do, as I imagine that's the point of choosing that setting, though of course there's room for two different settings here, where you can take anybody over, but there are heavy restrictions on how that works; as you say, this isn't necessarily easy, when it comes to behavioral restrictions, but restrictions like "must control for X years" is something -- if somebody wants that restriction for story purposes, suicide/etc. isn't a concern, since they've opted-in to the ruleset in the first place.

[Toady One]

<concerning dev goal: Site resources should depend on trade/tribute relationships as well as available professions and sprawl sites>

Is this currently realised in the applicable loot tables for active historical/ahistorical crafts-people on site, or is the production of tribute & resources simulated by site type or other behind the scenes mechanics?

It's purple (partially complete) up there mainly because of the world gen site stockpiles and trade relationships; there are lots of numerically tracked goods, managed in lots by source market site id, and that's somewhat reflected in the town trade goods (and why people hawking wares in the markets can say where their goods are from.)  However, all of the personal equipment is done just according to the local goods; it looks at the regional animals for instance to do all the leathers.  Certain reactions as with alloys, though, are determined entirely by the raws, and it doesn't yet even try to check for the reagents being available.  So there's a lot going on, but it's only part of the way there.

What are the current 8 short and long-term memory categories?

Ah, there are 42 groupings and 8 slots; the slots don't have types.  The idea is just to stop one or two memory types from dominating everything, but it's possible for some weak groups to be excluded.  However, all of the thoughts about, say, complaints and petition rejections and not having a tomb and everything that feels like bad site government is just one category, and it is by far the largest.  So parts of the game where we have a lot of odd details can't dominate the proceedings, at least.

1. If a creature dies on an afterlife plane what are the possibilities for what can happen to them?
2. Can you give us some examples of how a player adventurer would go about rooting out or joining an evil plot?
3. If player adventurers will be able to lead armies will they be able to gather their civilization's army at any time or only when they are at war with another group?
4. Will player adventurers ever be given quests by their lords/ladies to be part of an army led by someone else and if so how will traveling as part of an army work?

1. Depends on the creature and the plane.  Pen-and-paper tells us that natives of the planes generally die permanently or are reformed after X days/years.  Not unreasonable.  Pen-and-paper also tells us that 'souls' arriving in a plane can be traded and devoured or whatever, but this is somewhat silly; it'd likely require a certain sort of flair to the magic settings to cast away metaphysical notions of final judgment with such abandon (assuming some kind of final judgment, which is a common enough theme but not at all universal.)  I suspect we'll generally be looking less toward pen-and-paper here and going more for a no-death-in-the-permanent-afterlife vibe oftentimes, though other possibilities will arise.
2. All specific adv-driven examples will wait for the logs I think.  World gen isn't even done yet and I don't want to get ahead of myself.
3. Wars have to start somehow, though we haven't decided on any specifics here.
4. This is a problem we haven't solved yet more generally; there's nothing too wrong with just doing the Indiana Jones thing and have you move along with their * on the map for as long as you cede control, and we had thoughts along these lines even for some of the party stuff, but we're not sure yet.

Will this cause changes in Adventure-mode? I know the current push is for Fortress mode but friendships and such would be a big addition in ADV mode.

I mean being friends with say a kings consort could get you into better standing. Heck with friendships alone it might be easyer to find people and shops you are looking for.

Yes, it's an odd world now, where you can gain a reputation for politeness or for being a trade partner after swapping socks with somebody, but it doesn't track the larger dynamics.  We'd talked a bit last time-ish about considering doing a relationship grid for the party, and that's some kind of start, and it feels like we're sort of moving into this realm now.  I'm not ruling it out yet, though as you say, not precisely the focus; when the adventurer is running a villain chain though, understanding friendship there becomes an equalizing practicality.

1. How will adapting the creation myth to different cultures work? It would be odd if goblins, elves and humans all had the exact same creation myth.

2. Will the myth generator be able to generate extremely advanced/magically potent 'precursor' races (I know, it's a sci-fi term, but I feel like it fits here too) and how would they be balanced? While it would be cool to have a race of basically omnipotent reality-bending lizards in the myth story, if they persisted in 'recorded history' (the playable time) in significant numbers it would probably be obscenely unbalanced and they'd be able to curbstomp everyone else.

3. If said races are planned, just how powerful would they be able to be? As much as literal deities (building pocket planes, creating new deities from scratch, etc.)?

4. I saw that in the current version of the myth generator, one can have mortals rise up in rebellion against deities, though they seem to always lose. Will it be possible to have a more generalized war system for the myth generator, enabling war in heaven style conflicts between deities, groups of deities, precursors, etc. where any of the combatants can get eliminated, transformed, etc.?

Death Dragon: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7834581#msg7834581
voliol: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7834642#msg7834642
Shonai_Dweller: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7834897#msg7834897
Miuramir: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7835584#msg7835584

1. I think was addressed by the above replies.
2. I don't have an issue with obscenely unbalanced curbstompers in the sense that we'll have gods, which are even worse, infinitely worse.  Coming to terms with the realities of cosmological decisions will be part of the fun, and we'll have to adjust from there; if omnipotent gods make the worlds universally silly, maybe we won't have them in the end, but I think there's room to work, and I think that also holds for precursors living among us.  It's fine to be unpowerful, if you want to play a non-precursor character, or you could play a precursor if they are in fact still around.  And as Miuramir says, you do occupy a kind of middle ground already.  The earlier conceptions of DF were about having humans explore stages of distance between the dwarves and tracing a few of their artifacts over time, even into a roughly modern day analog at one point.
3. Yeah, I don't think there are any lines I'm putting up until it becomes necessary.  Certain slider settings will imply active gods or godlike beings.  Of course, you can just flick that off, and that might be the default if they end up being too annoying (before the first release, possibly.)  What is the source of restraint of the involved omnipotent gods?  It depends more on the author's imagination, I suppose.
4. Yes, I suspect this will be the case, time-permitting.

(Regarding 08/18 devlog) Will the role of families also be expanded both in wg and fortress mode? Family ties are stronger than friendship and are underdeveloped in the game.

Ah, yeah, those were some of the few links we already had so I failed to mention them in my new-links rambling.  Family will play a large role in the process.

1.You said in devlog that the succesful plotting, alongside beliefs and position of target, would be determined by "intrigue skill". Is it going to be seperate skill like mining or dodging, or it will be mix of social skills like liar or diplomat?
2. You mentioned that being a criminal mastermind would be a thing soon. If option of playing inquisitor/detective in adventure mode will be supported as well? Not necessarily in full possible spectrum, but being able to discover plots via just talking with people and having right set of skills/clues, or occasional quest to thwart some villain agenda would be a thing that at least I look forward.
3. In same spirit, if there would be fortress guests which will petion to stay in your fort to help you in discovering and preventing from villainous plots? Just like monster slayers come to help you hunt down critter in caverns.
4. Will be able to choose not only what equipment to take at the start of adventure, but what quality it would be? For instance, paying more points to have *iron longsword* instead of normal one?

1. Yeah, this was not a perfect decision exactly, but we're leaning toward a skill right now that encapsulates certain theories of tradecraft and scheming, as learnable things, the same way people can learn about making chairs.
2. Ah, yes, the 'hero' side of the matter will also be supported, even prioritized, though as you suggest, certain parts of that are easier to handle than others.  We'd like you to be able to work your way up a villain chain to the final villain where practical; this involves not immediately killing people, perhaps, though if that proves tricky at first we can use Incriminating Notes or other not uncommon video game silliness as a stopgap measure.  Depends on time as much as anything.
3. Hmm, it's a reasonable suggestion, especially if your civ leader or another fort is running counter-villain agents on some scheme that winds up at your doorstep.  I'm not sure we'll get there, but it might be something I have to handle just because they will want to come, same as the bad ones.
4. Ah, I hadn't considered this at all, strangely enough (or not strangely.)  I'll note it down but can't make any promises at this juncture for the release.  Same is true for fort equipment too if I remember, and I'm not sure we ever had a reason for that.  I can see restricting masterpieces to ones made by your fort, but not simple well-crafted stuff.  I think the convention has been as well that higher quality equipment is generated with a higher probability of random artistic improvements on it.  It'd definitely be too much work for this time to allow you to set specific improvements, but random ones might come along for the ride.  I think (?) you used to be able to start with them if you set your skills high enough anyway, as that's part of the "master weaponXer" default equipment plan.

Will historical figures such as monarchs weigh their foriegn policy with other civilizations based on friendship with other civilisation members/leaders they might bond/break links with.

We've had a person-to-person evaluation for leaders for years; it looked at family relationships and religious similarities, since that's all we had to work with.  We'll be expanding that into friendship and the other linkages now as we add them.  I'm not sure it'll go so far as to look beyond leaders, as that sort of network scanning can get expensive (though it'll be getting some additional shortcuts this time to facility agent schemes, so who knows?)

Now that memories and thoughts can change personalities, will eating a particularly good/bad meal ever change food preferences?

Seems like a reasonable suggestion.  It used to reveal food preferences as you found them, and that made sense when there were fewer of them.  Now, it's like we need broader categories and quirky exceptions and sudden realizations and all that.

Will we potentially see, in the myth and magic update, a race with magical capabilities summoning representants of an otherwordly race, and this otherwordly race possibly overthrowing their summoners/settling the world on their own?

FantasticDorf: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7835233#msg7835233

1. Will personality now influence the descisions a leader might make? For example, a paitient and vengeful person might be more likely to start a plot?

2. Can we expect diplomatic faux pas or other things rising from the personalities of leaders and their relationships with each other?

3. With villainy being fleshed out, can we expect someone gaining enough power to start a civil war, or create their own ‘empire’?

4. Would dreams/goals influence plots? Say, if there’s a person who dreams to rule the world, they may hatch a plot to hold the world in their iron grip?

1. For villains, this is the case, yeah.  Personality also already influenced decision scoring for starting wars and so forth.  It isn't super interesting though, and will hopefully continue to slowly improve.

2. It's reasonable but I'm not sure when; almost all of these sort of incidental but important variations on events are missing.  Just getting the skeleton has been a lot of work, but the variations are crucial as well.

3. It's not something that's supported yet; the law/status/etc. release includes definitions for subgroups to allow this to happen more formally in a way people can talk and think about succinctly.  The current entity structures don't work.  However, starting wars and having informal power over everything are quite likely, so...  sort of a soft yes, heh.

4. This is reasonable.  There are new sets of short-term goals, but I really should make use of the ones we have.

1. What sort of laws/religious stuff do you think needs to be added specifically for the villain update?
2. Will criminal organizations inside the same town or city fight each other?
3. Will this change in the number of criminal organizations per town or city open up more kinds of missions for player adventurer's in those groups?
4. In the villain update how much will laws vary between civilizations and will there be a way for the player adventurers to find out what those laws are?

1. Dunno yet.  Priests exist as hist figs at sites but they don't do anything or form specialized links.  Any links would be exploitable; even a recognition that the priest is of the proper religion would be useful.  Law stuff is really all over the place; it influences reasons relationships can sour, villains have a general disdain but also use for them, and we also might need new ones for the fort investigation to have teeth.  But as I've said, it's not clear exactly what we'll be adding to world gen from our grab bag to get plots properly varied.  That's happening presently and I'll add what I need; I'd hoped to know by now but August was as it was.
2. Fight is a strong word, as I'm not sure what new violence we'll have here overall, but any two schemers would initially be at odds.  That might not remain the situation as their plots progress and intersect.
3. I suspect, though the role of adventurer as villain subordinate is still up in the air due to the conversation stuff I think I mentioned previously.  Just a time thing, though we're all for it.
4. I don't think laws are going to be so firmly established and all-encompassing in this release.  There is still the actual Law release.  I'm working more for convenience this time.

Is it possible that, with the myth and magic updates' progress, we might end up seeing a powerful enough mage/sorcerer/warlock/summoner/god/angel/demon/thing casting a mass spell on a city or region? Bring in some sort of demonic mist over the place or straight up warp a whole castle/village into a pocket dimension/hell itself?

KittyTac: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7838908#msg7838908
golemgunk: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7838980#msg7838980

We've also mentioned world-ending scenarios, which are more disastrous than city-level spells.  Additionally, if it's not possible to play some vague analog of Master of Magic in DF (at some world slider setting), we aren't doing our job.

So with the with the implementation of sites outside of yours that are within your holdings and the ability to exile Dwarves there to remove them from your fortress and visa versa, what would be the chance of getting "work sites" and the chance of this being done before the big wait?

By work site, I mean things like mines, logging camps, farms etc.

Starting on a site with no iron can be a real problem and require you to only outfit people with copper/bronze or painstakingly trade for iron and coal or cheese multiple sieges with traps until you can melt down Goblin weapons and armor until you have enough iron to equip the militia. When with these outside work sites, you can send Dwarves off to prospect for any type of material and they begin working a mine, sending a caravan back periodically and supplying the fortress with materials. This can extend to ores, wood, food, sand, clay and more and would help fortresses lacking in various things on the embark.

Plus with farms, you can have Dwarves run ranches etc without the issue of 30 cows damaging the FPS but you still get milk, meat and leather.

Then you have the fun of attacks on the work sites, a gold mine raided by bandits, or a Goblin faction you are at war with attacks your mine rather than your fortress, and of course, Elves upset with your logging camp send in the war grizzly's to stop the deforestation, all of which can kill and scatter your Dwarves, them returning with the tale of the attack.

Naturally this can expand adventure mode too, with them becoming randomly generated sites in history and can be formed and lost as the world progresses, and your lord could send you off to cause trouble/raze a nearby goblin mine. Plus these work sites can act as war justification/cause, "the war started over a disagreement over local resources" or some such matter.

I understand that there are plans that outside hillocks will be able to send food etc but I think having, smaller, more focused sites would also be a decent addition to fortress mode as well as the world building that benefits adventure mod.

Shonai_Dweller: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7839048#msg7839048
BassDwarf (op): http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7839126#msg7839126

It's really not going to come first; one of the main points of the law/property/etc. release is to make work sites possible (and playable.)  It requires a large framework to happen.

Is it ever planned for the DF map to be "continuous"? As in, will fluid that runs off the map and minecarts shot out of it always just disappear for good, or one day will we see these fluids and items actually go somewhere and affect wherever they land?

I'm particularly curious about this for moving fortress parts. It'll be hard to make a weapon to surpass Metal Gear if we can't use rails to shoot things off site with it.

PatrikLundell: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7839209#msg7839209

The above reply is the crux of it.  This doesn't mean that abstract structures can't tie things together in certain ways.  If you have some sort of Meteor Gun, and can shoot other cities with it, that doesn't mean the other cities need to be loaded in detail to feel it.  A lot of the powerful magic spells will have these kinds of abstract effects.  It's not possible to simulate it at tile-detail though, at least, not all the time -- we do have plans with the planar/army stuff of allowing other parts of the world to be loaded, and if you want to load up a camera shot of ground-zero for your world-range spell, then that is in the cards.  (whether you'd have the ability to get the camera would depend on a variety of things; it's quite possible the sensible player will work on their remote viewing spells first so that they can enjoy their other spells more properly)

In celebration of the (first) anniversary of the last announced ban on the forum, I'd like to ask, is this an unreservedly a 'good thing'?  ...which is my way of asking about that pachyderm over there without actually naming it...

Separately, are there any plans to reintroduce Dwarven Parties?  I ask because stress balancing and addressing the difficulty of forming relationships seem to be on the table in the near future.

A good thing.  Seems good.  You mean you want me to ban more people?  I haven't been holding back.  It just hasn't come up.  If you feel there's a problem, you should report it.  Perhaps you have and I've been lax.  This is possible.  The end of the thread this month indicates that the forum is certainly not without ongoing problems.

On parties:

Shonai_Dweller: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7839701#msg7839701
feelotraveller (op): http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7839727#msg7839727
Shonai_Dweller: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7839745#msg7839745
feelotraveller (op): http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7839759#msg7839759

Yeah, the world gen festivals still haven't made it to fort mode; that'll be useful for the problems, though it's a bit involved to be used as our stress fixer, which we'll be getting to sooner.

Will angels ever behave benevolently in the game world, or are they meant to remain antagonistic?

KittyTac: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7840570#msg7840570

Yeah, the current setup is a quite odd testing ground, and specifically related to the demon world entry/binding.  Angels in the future should be more reflective of their associated deities/spheres/etc. (already, deities w/ certain spheres are prohibited from being involved with vaults), and will be unimpeachably benevolent in certain cases, to the extent we can pull that off.

Do you think it would effect the schedule /donations if you just took an extended holiday every August?
I know the forums would cope.

Do you think you can budget for a dust mask or respirator of some kind? It sounds like the air has been rough on you!

It would probably just be a matter of timing it.  Sometimes July is bad, sometimes August is bad, and it can be tricky to figure out exactly which week or month will be terrible.  It certainly wouldn't have hurt to skip town for a week or two in here, especially if I'd explained what was up in advance, and it's better than having to explain the disaster afterward, anyway.  In my defense, I had got a window fan for this year, and it was helping the night-time sleep temperature -- I was in good spirits!  Then the smoke came, and the window fan couldn't be used.  So next year, an air filter maybe?  One of the military-grade masks people recommend?  Then we'll see what conspires against that.  Summer is actively malevolent.

How much do you think you'll address stability issues before the big wait?

PlumpHelmetMan: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7843849#msg7843849
Shonai_Dweller: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7843881#msg7843881

If you don't mean stability in terms of actual crashes, but more the broader sense of bugs, there will be some more work.  I'm not going to remotely clear the tracker or anything.  That's never been practical in the face of upcoming features which will render swaths of bugs irrelevant, but of course there are other bugs that should be fixed as soon as I can get to them.

Right now the thoughts and preferences screen is the main tool the player has to control and manage happiness in the fort. Can we expect for this to change once proper site administrations are implemented and dwarves (individually or collectively and besides nobles) can make requests or demands?

I'm not sure exactly when to expect changes there.  Clearly some kind of aggregation is needed, especially when the reading burden for individual thought screens becomes too high (which is arguably already true for the starting seven.)  Part of the idea was to handle it with subgroups; once there is a miners guild, say, they can naturally aggregate happiness requests for their members, and it would become part of the fortress politics to handle those parts of the game.

What do you think about adding (and playing as) oppressive systems of government?

FantasticDorf: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7844261#msg7844261
Death Dragon: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7844276#msg7844276
Demonic Gophers: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7844383#msg7844383
Dozebôm Lolumzalěs: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7844782#msg7844782
etc.

There are particular bits of oppression I have no interest in adding (systematized sexual violence, many of the various human genocides, certain forms of discrimination as previously discussed, etc), and other bits are already in there, as observed in the referenced posts.  So you'd have to be more specific, though I don't want to drag what's apparently a suggestions forum beef into this thread.

[PlumpHelmetMan]

Thanks for the answers, Toady. Keep up the good work, and obviously take care of yourself in these increasingly extreme summer temps.

[ZM5]

Thanks for the answers, Toady. Glad that you've been holding up relatively well this past month - can't wait for the next devlog (and more importantly the villains update, heh)

[PlumpHelmetMan]

Agreed. Honestly the villain arc is the most excited I've been for a DF release in a while now.

[trib]

<snip>

Do you think you can budget for a dust mask or respirator of some kind? It sounds like the air has been rough on you!

It would probably just be a matter of timing it.  Sometimes July is bad, sometimes August is bad, and it can be tricky to figure out exactly which week or month will be terrible.  It certainly wouldn't have hurt to skip town for a week or two in here, especially if I'd explained what was up in advance, and it's better than having to explain the disaster afterward, anyway.  In my defense, I had got a window fan for this year, and it was helping the night-time sleep temperature -- I was in good spirits!  Then the smoke came, and the window fan couldn't be used.  So next year, an air filter maybe?  One of the military-grade masks people recommend?  Then we'll see what conspires against that.  Summer is actively malevolent.
<snip>

Furnace HEPA filters aren't that expensive and should be quite easy to MacGyver in front of a fan to get most of the smoke particles. Best would be above MERV 17 however since 90% of smoke particles are smaller than 1 micron size, but MERV 16 should also help as it is 1.0–0.3 μm filtering.

Airflow will of course suffer, but this is probably a better option than an air filter in the room since a fan blowing in smoke will overwhelm it most likely.

[Death Dragon]

Additionally, if it's not possible to play some vague analog of Master of Magic in DF (at some world slider setting), we aren't doing our job.

That is very much nice to hear because I LOVE Master of Magic.
Now I want to play as an antmen civ, summoning creatures to conquer sites in an alternate plane.

[Real_bang]

What are you planning on doing from the devlog after the villain arc?

[Shonai_Dweller]

What are you planning on doing from the devlog after the villain arc?

There's only really Armies and Improved Sieges left from pre-mythgen plans (adventurer stuff will probably be mixed in like this time). I imagine we'll know by the time next month's fotf comes around.

[FantasticDorf]

What are you planning on doing from the devlog after the villain arc?

There's only really Armies and Improved Sieges left from pre-mythgen plans (adventurer stuff will probably be mixed in like this time). I imagine we'll know by the time next month's fotf comes around.

Depending on how it rolls out, this arc was sort of a deviation because jumping into the myth sooner than later would have left the world under-developed so i expect that the villian's will serve to flesh out the world narrative wise more the same way defacto location visitors did with site traffic and game mechanics to simply put more people in the world that weren't cooped up purely in sites.

Personally without asking i think he wants a fresh start by January so he can dedicate the full remaining year to the Myth-Arc with some sort of playable basic iteration and soft introduction with a few select wizards & spells and a basic mythgen editor by the end of that year or least a viable scope of a prototype, so until December he's filling in all the 'cracks' as it were with worldgen and gameplay mechanics to make a richer world.

[PatrikLundell]

@FantasticDorf: I suspect the time estimate is way off:
- I don't think starting time is important, but rather will be a function of when Toady think he's done enough to tide us over and then taken care of the game breaking level bugs.
- It's called the BIG wait for a reason. A single year for the initial development phase of an arc is on the short side for a normal arc. Two years would be quite reasonable, but crossing the 3 year mark probably hurts, so I'd expect feature postponing due to time to start at about the 2˝ year mark (things running into trouble and expected to take a fair bit more time than expected can probably be postponed earlier).
- This arc will break save compatibility, and as far as I understand it, this means Toady will want to do all those compatibility breaking system updates that have been held back in one fell sweep, which means replacement of a huge amount of plumbing.
- Once all that old plumbing has been replaced and the system has been wired back together it's finally time to actually add something, which I would suspect would mainly be the underlying Myth & Magic system, but with a fairly scant set of applications of it.
- Once the bare bones have something on them, I'd expect a first, wildly unbalanced, version to get feedback for balancing from while more flesh is added to the bones.
Of course, Toady knows his plans and processes better than anyone else, so he may provide a correct overview in his answers at the end of the month.

[FantasticDorf]

- It's called the BIG wait for a reason. A single year for the initial development phase of an arc is on the short side for a normal arc. Two years would be quite reasonable, but crossing the 3 year mark probably hurts, so I'd expect feature postponing due to time to start at about the 2˝ year mark (things running into trouble and expected to take a fair bit more time than expected can probably be postponed earlier).

I put it down to wanting players to playtest his early working version first and also keep the community's fire stoked because i know some people habitually drift back and fourth between versions and i doubt Toady isn't aware of that fact too, ontop of making the DF page not look inactive if it goes quiet of devlogs for a bit. I personally doubt Toady will commit full to the continous wait because there will always be the Mantis reports in motion even after a big cull of as many as he can pin down and whatever takes his fancy in the meantime with deviative but also productive projects he can slide around the production of the magic arc such as little leaps to finalise and polish the villian and army arcs respectively so they integrate a little smoother.

Of course, Toady knows his plans and processes better than anyone else, so he may provide a correct overview in his answers at the end of the month.