Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Shonai_Dweller]

Toady keeps saying it will take "a couple of years" from when he starts "around the end of this year" . I mean, yeah, his estimates are never right, but still, one year would be a minor miracle.

Incidentally, currently reading the 2012 Big Wait devblogs. Very entertaining. What makes you think he'd stop writing the blog just because he's Big Waiting?

[ZM5]

This kinda reminds me of a much older interview where Toady estimated the magic update would be out by...2018. I'd have to find it again, though.

[KittyTac]

This kinda reminds me of a much older interview where Toady estimated the magic update would be out by...2018. I'd have to find it again, though.

I Want My Magic Update.

[George_Chickens]

Are there any ways planned for the counter-use of magic or defence against it? With the description of extremely powerful spells, it seems probable that a mature fort may piss off the wrong sorcerers and get wiped off the face of the earth with a catastrophically powerful hex.

[KittyTac]

Are there any ways planned for the counter-use of magic or defence against it? With the description of extremely powerful spells, it seems probable that a mature fort may piss off the wrong sorcerers and get wiped off the face of the earth with a catastrophically powerful hex.

Anti-magic is a common fantasy element, so probably yes, depending on the world.

[FantasticDorf]

Are there any ways planned for the counter-use of magic or defence against it? With the description of extremely powerful spells, it seems probable that a mature fort may piss off the wrong sorcerers and get wiped off the face of the earth with a catastrophically powerful hex.

Naturally ties into emergence/decline mechanics of how the overall could possibly change in play with the basic elements, such as on a no magic world (with on teeny weeny discrepency) could suddenly unleash a torrent of supernatural happenings and phonemema by reading aloud something akin to the necronomicon on the whispers of dark ethereal voices dismissed as illness or tales to scare children.

Or a highly magic world for a inexcplicable reason having its guardians supporting the magic locked away and having supernatural things fade out of existance, wither and die. This explanation is relatively scraped together from different talks, devlogs, threetoe stories and chats but we'll have to wait to see how it'll pan out.

[Tinnucorch]

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.

I'm glad to hear you're better after all the problems this last month
I was indeed thinking about technical limitations so your answer was perfect
Really looking forward to the next release!

[Buttery_Mess]

Do you think it would be possible to simply adventurer mode into a set of rules that could be used as a pen-and-paper roleplaying game? On a purely mechanical level, for things like movement, combat, generic skill checks and so on.

If so, do you think it would be possible to data from generated worlds to use as source material for the game? For example, maps, a bestiary, and so on.


This thought just popped into my head. DF has been described as a fantasy world generator so it's already got good source material for fantasy settings. I wondered if combat could be simplified and abstracted in order to make better use for it as a tabletop RPG, like another game mode besides those we already have. This isn't a suggestion, I'm just wondering if the underlying combat system is too complicated (with armour material, body types and sizes, and so on) for it to be simplified in such a way.

I mean, I suppose you could program automatic statistical experiments into DF to output lists of probabilities for the outcome of combat and use that as a basis for RPG rules... it seems doable in my head. But I don't have a degree in maths, am not a strong programmer, and don't really know how DF works, under the hood.

[PatrikLundell]

@Buttery_Mess: You're probably better off using DF to produce a background setting in which you place your adventures, using whatever rule set you find fits you and your fellow players. One thing computers are very good at is to crunch numbers and handling large tables, so it doesn't matter if you've got 500 materials making up 2000 weapons that meet the same number of armor material type/material combinations in various sizes, but just looking up everything in tables gets tiring rather fast when done manually.
Also, manual turn management usually doesn't like 20 turns of misses, dodges, and bruises, while a computer will just keep going until the battle is resolved.

DF already has map exports and Legends Mode data should be possible to use for backdrop material. The creature (and plant) raws are the technical side of a bestiary (plus flora).

[Death Dragon]

Do you think it would be possible to simply adventurer mode into a set of rules that could be used as a pen-and-paper roleplaying game? On a purely mechanical level, for things like movement, combat, generic skill checks and so on.

If so, do you think it would be possible to data from generated worlds to use as source material for the game? For example, maps, a bestiary, and so on.

Uh, I think you're missing some words?
"To simply adventurer mode into a set of rules"?
"To data from generated worlds"?
If you're asking about being able to export stuff from the game, you can already export a world's map and history like PatrikLundell mentioned above me and can use it for third party programs like legends viewer.

[TrueWolves]

Do you think it will ever be possible for a character, object, or any other entity to cross between completely different generated worlds? Say you have more then one world generated and fuzzy magic:tm: happens while exploring some plane's edge or by some god's actions, or maybe a trait intrinsic to the character's own traits via race or adventurer reaction/status.

If so, do you think they'll be able to retain any of their own world-specific traits or skills, or find themselves always at the mercy of a new universe?

Could a world ever be flagged during creation to specifically pull someone(random or otherwise) from another world file to turn in to some sort of god-like or at least unusual historical figure? Obviously this would make the world much less reproducible unless you always used the same two seeds in a row without playing the previous world, but would such a thing ever be possible?


Honestly I don't expect most of this to be possible in any kind of first pass or potentially even first full version of Dwarf Fortress. It be a complicated concept to code for, but the Arena code does already pull from whatever world files you need it to. There is a lot of neat stories out there where some cruel god like being draws multiple people from other universes in some sort of contest to the death... or other stories where a small plane exists entirely as an ironic hell for entities from other worlds (Ravenloft anyone?)

Also wow, haven't posted on here in years...

[PatrikLundell]

@TrueWolves: It would be extremely messy, as worlds have raws, and if you try to mix and match you'd end up with conflicting and missing definitions. Your generated race, "dorv" exists in one world, but doesn't in another, and his generated weapon "batleax" likewise is definied only at the source, being made out of "translucent octarine" which happens to clash with the target world's "translucent octarine". Not to mention that this character "knows" a lot of people that don't exist in the target game (basically a bunch of "unknown hist figs" as if you'd been culling them).

You can probably hack that kind of effect by making a raw for a race that somehow isn't generated anywhere and then hack a character into existence to role play universe pulling antics.

It's much more reasonable to imagine characters from the current world being pulled into a pocket plane of some powerful entity, because the world and its data still exists, even if the character has been transported to somewhere where a different raw subset (possibly generated and added on the fly as the pocket springs into existence) is used.

[happy face]

 Will the personality have a more important role in the game?

 

[Shonai_Dweller]

Will the personality have a more important role in the game?

Lime green for questions so Toady Eyes can spot it.

Also, you should mention a timeframe. Development is due to last the next 30 years or so, so the answer is, of course, "yes" with no specifc details.

In the short-term, villains arc will be making use of personalities. So yes in the short-term too.

Depends what you mean by "more important" though. They're extremely important right now effecting almost everything about a dorf.

[Oreos]

Playing in adventure mode i have noticed vampires are a bit currently dull. Vampires in mythology have always been powerful beings with many powers and abilities so Will Vampires get some new abilities like hypnosis, thrall creation, and polymorphism? And if so Would Vampire villians have different plot options from regular villians if they did have typical vampire powers?