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[Dozebôm Lolumzalěs]

Where did you read that? I didn't see it in any devlogs.

[Toady One]

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

Shonai_Dweller: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7845973#msg7845973
FantasticDorf: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7846284#msg7846284
PatrikLundell: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7846290#msg7846290
etc.

Basically, yeah, we have the armies and siege stuff left, time is obviously *feeling* tight after that horrible Summer, but it's important to leave everybody with a decent DF, so we could do it all.  I'm not 100% decided.  Want to fix more bugs, handle stress and other large issues as well.

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: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7846510#msg7846510
FantasticDorf: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7846512#msg7846512

He he, yeah, certainly if dwarves still exist by the time you start playing, they were doing something right, even if it was just laying low while the surface world was being scoured by magical forces.  Presumably resistance/counters/etc. will enter into it.

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.

PatrikLundell: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7846755#msg7846755
Death Dragon: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7846892#msg7846892

Yeah, as PatrikLundell implies, I got into video games for a reason, and one of them was data processing.  The checks/etc. are generally beyond what people would tolerate at the table.  That's not to say you couldn't make a pen-and-paper game that aligned vaguely with what we are going for, but I'm not sure how much different it would be from one of the more intricate ones that already exists (aside from whatever setting-based stuff we have, which we never really focused on.)

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?

PatrikLundell: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7848511#msg7848511

To add to that reply, we had some weird ideas in the past, like trying to have a shared afterlife between our games where some universal format would be uploaded.  This aligns also with the notion of editors, somewhat.  So it's the sort of thing that could theoretically be explored, but also isn't a focus of what we're doing.  Still, it might end up on the table, especially if, to aid editing, we end up with something like an "export universal def" option for generated objects, for use later in the editors.  Those text files would might be transferrable, but, as in PatrikLundell's example, nothing gets around conflicting names, etc., so something has to give.

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?

Putnam: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7849258#msg7849258
Tinnucorch: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7849519#msg7849519
DG: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7849577#msg7849577

Villains should start to respect their powers as we go, perhaps even this time (that was the intention with vampire and necromancer villains, anyway.)

With the new villains you are working on, I was wondering will villainous plots would form around adventure mode characters and their party, and maybe even with in the player's party (Betrayal)?

Also Will we every see adventure mode fast travel?

The focus when we get there will be on the adventurer investigating villains, and the adventurer being a villain.  Now, companions might be villains or villainous agents (if this isn't a party you created yourself), but that'll restrict their ability to act, generally, since they are stuck with you (when you aren't sending them away.)  When it comes to intraparty intrigue and party infiltration, probably not going to do anything specific with that, on account of time, though we do want the villain to act against the player adventurer in overt ways at a bare minimum.

Regarding fast travel:

Ziusudra: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7850662#msg7850662
golemgunk: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7851145#msg7851145
Bumber: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7851459#msg7851459

1. Will you be able to marry someone in adventure mode?
2. Will you be able to set links with your adventure party members (childhood friend/war buddy/wife/brother/etc.)

Tinnucorch: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7850502#msg7850502
Demonic Gophers: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7850521#msg7850521

1. Are you touching fortress mode relationships before the next release? Most notably, will "childhood friends" and "war buddies" become relationships that can occur in fort mode too, or just in worldgen? Or are they a shorthand for just different circumstances under which people can become friends?

2. Do you take personalities & values into account when making worldgen friendships, or just in-game friendships?

3. Is remarriage (after being widowed or abandoned due to night creature transformation) in the cards for the next release? Worldgen, fort-mode, both?

Glad to hear that the issue of historical figure immigrants all being already-married is likely to come to an end soon.

1. It's shorthand currently; fort mode theoretically already has childhood friendships (not that friendships are working well generally, and children are perhaps especially broken), though it doesn't really have a war buddy notion, people in squads are often closer to each other (adding socializing on raids would of course be a plus.)  Overall, we are hoping to get to some of the world gen ideas translated over to fort mode, but stuff like divorce and affairs and so on will be more important for what we're working on.

2. Mostly not; there's a speed issue, and also the fact that worldgen figures not in decision-making positions often don't have personalities initialized due to the mem overhead.

3. Yeah, it's in world gen now, and should also appear in fort mode before I'm through.

if we're going to see relationships sour, does that mean divorce is going to be an option for unhappy couples?

Yeah, divorce is now in world gen, and anticipated as we move through to the other modes, once we get there for this release.  I haven't changed much about fort mode relationships yet.

When I listen to DF talk and watch the videos where you talk about the upcoming mythology update, it's hard not to notice all the references to randomly generated creatures. I quite enjoy modding creatures in Dwarf Fortress, but I can't edit or change any of the randomly generated creatures the game creates as it is and I'm worried that this is going to get worse and worse as development progresses. Will we be able to edit the tags of randomly generated creatures? Change what tags are associated to which sphere, for example? This question could be generalized to randomly generated anything, but I'm personally primarily interested in the creatures.

Shonai_Dweller: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7851441#msg7851441
Tinnucorch: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7851453#msg7851453
Shonai_Dweller: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7851455#msg7851455
Tinnucorch: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7851747#msg7851747
PatrikLundell: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7851773#msg7851773
voliol: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7851784#msg7851784

With the villains update, can we expect already existing criminal deeds (i.e. stealing, snatching) to be updated to work with the new framework? Something like thieves not actually having to leave the site and come back when trying to steal an artifact they’ve spotted in the fort.

There's going to be some incorporation, broadly, but weird behavior like you described might persist and become even more strange until we fix things a bit.

So, word says that you personally look up atleast the OP of every suggestion thread
What are the types of suggestions threads that are the most useful/interesting to you toady? Those that explain in detail a certain subject and how could it be implemented in DF? Lists of features that use unexpected mechanics and original ideas?

I myself want to write some up, but sometimes I feel like what I write (or see in the suggestion's thread, for that regard) could be done quite better before being posted, as a big load are just iterations of magic stuff brainstorms. So it would be great to know what type of information you value the most

FantasticDorf: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7853164#msg7853164
Rubik (op): http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7853231#msg7853231

It depends on the topic.  The simple usability suggestions can sometimes just go in as-stated and then it's best if it's just clear what you're asking for and why so I can think about the larger context.  When we get over into feature suggestions, what I generally look for is the underlying problem that the player has (if any), since I'm (often) in a better position to come up with a solution that works for me, and the specifics don't matter sometimes in that case.  For other kinds of suggestions, ones that are real-world directed, say, for dyes or something, highly specific, sourced information is best -- if I know there's some legit pathway for a given color or whatever, then I can think of how it might be implemented and have the material/process etc. information at hand.  Certain suggestions, like the magic ones you mention, are often suggesting a particular fixed paradigm, which I'm obviously not going to adopt if you look at the dev goals, but even then, it helps me know what people are interested in, which matters for features especially when I have, say, two powers I could add, time for one, and no strong preference myself.

So it comes down to how the suggestion integrates with the dev process, pretty much, saying which is sort of a tautology, but unavoidable.

But yeah, I read every OP, and often more.  it's impossible at this point to read every reply; fortunately OPs will often incorporate good discussion, or new threads will be created based on them, so I think we're collectively doing pretty well!  Hard for the development to catch up, though, naturally.

Will you at some point change the game so animals other than wolves be domesticated over the worlds history?

Dozebôm Lolumzalěs: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7854840#msg7854840

We don't even do (paleo-)wolves->dogs, at least not in a different form than cats or chickens or cavies are currently.  Not sure that the current way will change much.  However, one of the focuses of myths is "where did domestic animals come from?" and I suspect at some point it'll also be in our generated myths.  At that point, things will probably become more diverse at certain settings, though with the domestic animal raw files the way they are, I suspect vanilla-settings DF will generally prefer to use those, with some flavor here and there.

I hope the added relationship versions make it into fortress mode. Will we see children born out of wedlock and have the possibility of getting remarriages there (as well as spouses cheating on each other with lover(s) on the side)?
And: Is the age difference limitation for marriage lifted/modified in the process? (Sorry for a question that's very close to a suggestion).
And, even worse suggestiony: Is the rampant hist fig incest addressed in this process?

Yeah, anticipating that all the marriage/lover changes will make it over.

The age limit was modified in fact -- when I was looking through legends at some point, I found a 176 year old unmarried elf, and it turned out there was simply nobody available in the +/-10 age range (and of course, no elves in that age band could ever be produced again, so that was it.)  So now it uses +/-max(10,min(age_1,age_2)/2) (edit: corrected), with extra fudging over time if match-making fails.

I didn't change anything about the relationship checker, aside from the half-sibling stuff.

1. In one of the next two mini arches- adventuring parties and dynamic villains will our adventurers be able to learn about the relationships and histories of the people we meet? Currently asking about family only tells us about official relationships not stuff like love interests or affairs.
2. In the myth and magic update will possible magic include powers to learn about the histories of others without evening having to talk to them?
3. Further in the vain of personel histories would a possible kind of corruption in magical worlds include corruptions that replace one's memories of their life history with false ones? Like they don't remember their past correctly.
4. Will clothing and garments ever include pockets that can act as small containers we can use in adventure mode for small things like coins?

PatrikLundell: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7855991#msg7855991

In particular, I agree with the assessment on 3.  It might be possible to stick an identity on them, the ones we have now, but set up in such a way that they also fall for it and cannot turn it off voluntarily.  This might effectively cause them to live a different life, at least to some extent, as we improve agent behavior overall.

Many things I'd like to see for relationships!
<snip>

Shonai_Dweller: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7855981#msg7855981

Agree that this is precisely the sort of thing we're hoping the customs/etc. release will be defining/generating.

1. Will we be able to do wedding ceremonies in fort mode maybe in designated church or temple or any meeting place?
2. Will we encounter weddings in adventure mode past worldgen?

PatrikLundell: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7855991#msg7855991

Yeah, hard to say when -- festivals haven't made it out of world gen yet.  Law/customs/etc. has assumed as heavy a burden as the magic release.

Will we ever get any tools or features to help deal with aquifers? Or is this meant to be an ever-present obstacle for the sake of realism?

PatrikLundell: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7856215#msg7856215
Lemunde (op): http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7856279#msg7856279
Fleeting Frames: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7856309#msg7856309
DG: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7856353#msg7856353
Miuramir: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7858564#msg7858564

I have the general sense that different aquifer speeds might be in order.  Right now they are (kind of, not really) like these artesian aquifer pictures where the water is like SPLOOSH, but there's the other notion of just, like, a somewhat drippy cavern that might need some occasional helping and some pumps down below.  The latter would be pretty easy to set up, probably, with little 1/7s of water just popping out every so often, piling up if they aren't dealt with.  I've forgotten what's correct now, having not studied aquifers for many many years; I'm not sure that ground water speed illustration in the reply there encapsulates the positive pressure situation once the water is given a route out into open air, since that water literally spouts from sandstone into the air like a constant geyser.  That suggests that all possibilities in the range are permitted depending on the other layers of rock (which we could just fudge, pretty much), but I'd defer to a hydrogeologist, or related professional, or anybody.

Completely unrelated to anything you're working on now, what are your ideal plans for carrying items? Will there ever be volume restrictions? Physical encumbrance from anything besides armor/pure weight? Will "strapped to your body" items require string, sinew, or leather straps at some point in order to actually strap them on? Will adventurer item hauling (which sort of buggily exists) ever be more of a dragging across the ground thing, or a shoving to the next tile thing? What are your pie in the sky kind of hopes for it and what do you think are the big hurdles?

There's so many variations on this in other games and I know you usually go for the most realistic possible thing in a lot of situations. On the other hand since anything put in would probably have to be dealt with by the system once off-site items were better tracked, a lot of the more complicated systems in other games seem like they might overburden some of yours.

Will we get to set our adventurer's sexuality before the big wait?

Even if you don't make it to forming those relationships in adventure mode, having a player made villain tossed into the world while you're playing somewhere else would still be a lot cooler if they could be in a position to marry a monarch when you retire them. Or if you could just be a cool bisexual rat woman dragon slayer. I mean, that's the dream isn't it?

We had a side project some years back that had little paper doll inventories and required absolutely everything you'd need to carry stuff; adhesives, knots, all of whatever.  It was marginally annoying, but also sort of cool.  Adventure mode has been slowly leaning that way.  So I'm tempted to go all the way over in that mode, as long as the controls don't get more nested and annoying (so there'd need to be some automated steps to the related actions by default.)  I don't think dwarf mode could support it easily, all the junk items especially.  Pushing and dragging are all fair and fun, and they make for good ruin puzzles and so forth, or at least traditional ones.  Having an item block a tile can be a bit annoying, but we have the constructed tiles that track items which might work out, for items that should block.  This also fits in with those item pile tiles and moving fortress pieces and all that, ways to respect volume and items on the map; some of that's very hard, though.

I'm not sure all of what we'll get to as the character creation screen gets updated, but with all the relationship stuff going on, it's certainly getting to be a more reasonable time -- the main element of forming romantic/etc. relationships in adv mode will still be missing, so I wouldn't guarantee it, since it would be a retirement option, as you say.

1. Will villains and their subordinates try to manipulate other faction's/peoples motives, to play people against one another or get them to do dirty work without realizing it?
2. Will villains have more occult motives (i.e. subverting/changing a religion, finding knowledge/enlightenment, etc.) or will it be more focused in material, concrete stuff for now?
3. Can NPCs be in a romantic relationship without it being sexual?
4. Will bi-, a-, and homosexual orientations make it as a minority of the population?
5. In the previous Future of the Fortress reply, you mentioned that permanent "death" for souls that have an afterlife is unlikely. However, will there be situations where a soul could be temporarily/indefinably contained or consumed without being obliterated?
5b. Could there be situations where a living creatures soul is altered or corrupted so as to affect it's natural fate, like lichdom, Nirvana-style enlightenment, demonic/angelic pacts, etc.?
6. Are night creatures planned that will psychically drain a life-force or soul to feed, as opposed to physical feeding or immediately killing their prey?
7. Will vampire cults be adopted to fit with new night creatures, or will some new system likely come into play? (if it comes into play at all?)
7b. If there will be night creature cults in the future, will there be any cults based around creatures that cannot transform followers like vampires can? What would motivate these cults?
8. In the magic update, could there be two magic systems that draw upon one type of mana, allowing one to power the other? (Like an innate wizard "charging" a magic item that would normally requires exposure to the same power the wizard uses, but through different means.)
9. Will certain symbols become recurring and socially relevant? (ex: in various ancient real-life cultures, horns are considered a sign of power, and some speculate that crowns symbolically replicate them)
10. Will people try to perform symbolically relevant actions? (such as the ancient Egyptians destroying the name of certain criminals post-execution, because they thought the name was a part of the soul)
11. You've stated that the initial method of restricting mythological knowledge will be to have races know about stuff that directly relate to them. Will we see "folk-tales" develop to fill in these gaps? Like humans blaming weeds on fairies because they don't know anything about them except they're nature-y and they exist?)
11b. Would these folk-tales (if they exist) be local (but spreadable), or on a broader scale, like a whole nation or race?

Shonai_Dweller: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7857553#msg7857553

1. To some extent.  There's only so much motivation tracking, so we can't do a lot with this right now, but for a few things like war/peace we have stuff to work with.
2. As Shonai_Dweller replied, will have to wait.
3. Not at present.
4. Already done, as Shonai_Dweller stated.
5. Unclear what's going in at first, but we have the souls sitting there as movable objects, so I imagine something will come up (even if possession etc. is more likely initially).  One just has to square these odd permanent dispositions of the soul with any notion of eternal judgment, if both exist.
5b. Likely, and enlightenment at least is already in the prototype.
6/7/7b. It's not clear exactly what we'll have, of course, but we'll have the whole menu of new effects to choose from.  There are already lots of strange new creatures in the prototype, and we'll see what survives or gets added during the transition.  There are lots of shades between religions and cults and that sort of thing; motivation seems only somewhat important after a bit.  The vampire clearly has something to offer (even if they never actually pay out right now), and I'm not sure it'll be as clear with other night creatures -- at the same time, vampires are all created fresh right now, and some night creatures could be as old as the hills (or older), so more traditional religious views might apply.  For fresh, new night creatures, there'd need to be something else.
8. Hard to say what we'll get the first time through, but the system would support it easily -- power sources/pools are decoupled from their uses, so could be linked up in any way (not just 1:2 but 2:1 as well, sometimes, etc., for hybrid/advanced/researched stuff.)  Of course, the myths will build threads through them; for that reason, my first guess is that common pools will be somewhat more likely than individual pools for each type of magic.  However, it should be a pleasant mess.
9. We have entity symbols now, they just aren't done well and don't feed into a larger symbolism.  Magic symbolism will probably come in before cultural symbolism, just because of the release order and the likelihood that e.g. any form of 'alchemy' or 'potion-making' will require that sort of thing.
10. Sounds a reasonable enough suggestion for when we have more to work with.
11,11b. Haven't thought much about hybrid systems here; if the magic=zero slider works out and each society gets its own (false) myths, there's no reason to think this couldn't be applied elsewhere, as we currently do in a small way with the false prophets.  A lot of the myths are going to be oriented around answering the big questions, but only the ones being asked, and it's quite possible that e.g. the humans will not have an immediate answer to "where do elves come from?" when they look at their own (true) myth branch.  So, yeah, I agree it would be entertaining to explore what that means.  Would also be interesting to explore what happens if the true becomes apparent as mythical forces cross these boundaries.

[Toady One]

so what are the new limitations on relationships going to be like?
Has the age range changed?
Are interspecies relationships like those in one particular threetoe story (minus the childbearing i know thats going to be a nightmare for you) possible now?
What determines now when relationships will begin producing children (because it sounds like that can now happen out of wedlock)?
Is there a limit to the number of times a hist figure will marry?
with crazy families like the same woman producing many children with many different men, will those children see one another as (half)siblings?
If a historical figure has a claim on an artifact, and multiple children of multiple spouses, will each childs inheritance of that claim be tracked separately or together as if they were one family? If i gave it to the child of her first union would that be recognized by the child of her last union as being "returned to their family?"
Can extramarital affairs happen now? Its not clear in the devlog if that one particular elf was actually married to any of the relations they were involved in. I immediately see the potential of having multiple affairs breaking down into jealous murder of one another, and thats a fine starting point for a story or villainous revenge plot.

To what extent will modders be able to control relationships, at creature or entity levels?

So, apparently, children can now be born out of wedlock. Can a modder modify the likelihood of such an event, possibly by a new ethic?

Age range answered above -- currently running with +/-max(10,min(age_1,age_2)/2) (edit: corrected) instead of +/-10, with some tweaks.

Haven't done interspecies relationships yet, but there aren't really any significant barriers to it (if we ignore children, as you say.)

Relationships can produce children when they start up; it assumes everybody is sexually active.  That may change when we get to more of the customs stuff in the future.

There's no limit on the number of marriages.

Yeah, they can recognize half-siblings, but as you can imagine, with farther relationships it becomes more tenuous.

The family variable passes as it has; the older partner in a marriage controls the id number, and the id number passes from mother to child.  So if a child is born out of wedlock, that child will be in the mother's family.  When there is a marriage, I don't recollect if the children are all adopted in -- that would be proper enough.  But yeah, it's possible on a second marriage that the mother (if younger) switches families, and then siblings-by-name might not be in the same family (if there were adult children from a previous marraige), but that's also (vaguely) correct.

Yeah, there are extramarital affairs.  Due to worldgen memory restrictions (which can be loosened, but it would be a minor pain to write and maintain the optional extension structures), a person can have one spouse and two lovers at any given time, though without customs to establish baselines, I just made the chances generally lower for a person to get a second or third partner.

Also, as there are no customs to control things, I didn't add any placeholder tags here, but I'm open to suggestions if people want to tweak it a bit before those years pass.

Will people adopt other people as family/succession?

Adoption even with adults was long time a way to safe the line of succesion if a leader died and given that a ton of parents die in WG it would be nice to see some "lucky" children.
Also peoplemake friends now but what about enemies? Childhood abuse and such so they hate theyr parents?

Haven't added adoption specifically.  Of course, the demand for adoption in fort mode especially has been ongoing, and I'd really ought to do it.  But it hasn't happened yet.

I haven't touched the personal enemy side of things yet, aside from a few particular cases over relationships and athletics.  More is quite possible once the villains are rolling, but we'll have to see.

When will improvements to the speech engine be made?

VislarRN: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7858917#msg7858917

What kind of turn based Adventure mechanics are we going to see in the next release? I know we can use multi-move for most of it, but from what I've seen there are moves we can make, like actually moving to another tile, that can set off a turn. Will we get a way to hold off a turn until every member of our party has set their actions?

I plan on forming a D&D style party of my friends after I get comfortable with making parties in Adventure mode later on.

Ziusudra: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7858894#msg7858894
Urist McVoyager (op): http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7859709#msg7859709

Yeah, it's not completely finalized yet, but you should have the ability to set everybody's move before committing when you go over to tactical party mode.

Will it ever be possible to control non-civilized entities?

KittyTac: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7859219#msg7859219
Egan_BW: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7859221#msg7859221
KittyTac: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7859224#msg7859224
Egan_BW: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7859236#msg7859236
amymist (op): http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7859488#msg7859488
Urlance Woolsbane: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7859641#msg7859641

We were hoping at some point to do dragons and whatever else, yeah; it was in those distant future goals back when we posted those.  Clearly, it was silly to have posted them, since it has been twelve years and no dragon players (without modding, anyway.)  But it is still the dream.

Can relationships change over time? I'm thinking that rival athletes being thrown into war together and becoming war buddies is the plot of at least half a dozen movies.

Fleeting Frames: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7859257#msg7859257
Shonai_Dweller (op): http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7859270#msg7859270

It's really data-light right now, so I just let everything sit without overwrites or tracking changes, aside from the romantic stuff.  As stated somewhere else in here, it's possible to extend that optionally for certain people that become interesting without getting into mem trouble, but it was enough of a speed bump at the time that I just blew through it.  Would like to have some more dynamics in w.g., though, yeah.

Do athletic events have any consideration for the body attributes and skills of those participating? Similarly, is anything on the short term chopping block of fleshing out such events (actor-audience veneration style relationships, etc) in the short term, or are they largely thematic placeholders for now, to get the inter-social network of the world more depth for the villain-plot related arcs?

Another question: concerning "villainous plots", are the long term plans for these specifically to develop antagonists that can make clearly defined epics that the player can easily role play into? Or will the moralities and intentions of ambitious individuals start to become more ambiguous and diverse as ongoing development gives such actors more reasons to perform at odds with larger authorities?

Athletic events look at skills when they are available.  We mostly don't have particular atts available (if I recollect, they aren't generated in w.g. to save room), though we do have creature bodies themselves.  Mostly I'm just using them for link building now, yeah.

Yeah, "villainous plots" is the current framing, and a handy enough way to think about it, and the starting plots are going to be more on the corrupt/etc. side of things, but even now, some of it can be viewed more as "spy vs. spy" or as a tale of vengeance (which has whatever moral shade) or paranoia.  The mechanics will apply to everybody operating in this sphere over time, as things become more interesting.  It's just easier to start with the straightforward stuff, and easier to make it player-facing.

With the implication of multiple (before, the different states only reacted with themselves in peacetime and often had no knowledge of others without a war or player fortress trading/buggy hill dwarf links) trade routes, introductions and bondings mean that we will have positive relations (to ruin with dwarven ingenuity and game exploits like petty goods seizing, raiding etc.) that might repair themselves over time while things happen off map during the process of a non worldgen fortress?

And one small side question, is "the master of beasts" a implicit nod towards the defunct beastmaster noble or just coincidentally a fancy title name for this variable position padding out?

With so much war, diplomacy is a bit lacking, nice to see even if just worldgen something is being done and we might yet see the power of mutual friendship between leaders colluding their spy networks to prevail over evil plotting and schemes to divide them purposefully. Medieval NATO or the UN.

The w.g. trade routes have been there for a long time so were easy to use.  It's hard to say precisely what kind of link formation will carry into post w.g. at this time; we're trying to keep things as homogenous as we can, but post w.g. economics specifically is a danger zone.  Although I'm not sure I understood specifically what you meant about repair.  And yeah, I would like to have more positive diplomacy as we go...  I'm not sure we're there yet.

There was the old dungeon master noble, and it uses one of the same responsibilities that one had.  Master of beasts was just a generic way to rephrase some of the real-world positions like "master of horse" and so forth; I could have queried the available pet/mount races to form the name, but I discovered that those aren't compiled at the civ level at that stage of world gen.  I could have peaked at the mounts in the capital, but at some point I was just speeding through.  So Master of Beasts it became.  I'm sure it'll become numerously varied over time.

You mentioned thinking of upgrading necromancer and bandit lairs to be more extensive, but have you considered something similar for vampires or is that not on the roadmap for the upcoming updates?

Is a new civ/site type at all possible in the (relatively) near future? Not particularly expecting it but I've just been thinking about how a nomadic/tent-dwelling civ might function with the new mount mechanics.

If civs have flying mounts will they make contact with normally unreachable civs?

Will innate skills/stat boosts affect adventure mode party creation costs?

Vampires are more society-integrated as it stands, so I haven't thought about special lairs for them for this pass, no.  They certainly need a lot of work and diversification.

Nope, not in the near future; nomadic stuff is almost assured for the customs/etc. stuff.  One of the main points of it.

I've ignored the specific variations of contact/exploration speed/routes since boats will blow that all up and be the main factor normally.  It does factor terrain and continents in, but it does it the same way for everybody.

Regarding innate skills:

Shonai_Dweller: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7859656#msg7859656

apparently they don't work at all, and that hasn't yet changed.

When could NPC sites become moddable?
I think that if sites were moddable, you could ultimately save development time by essentially outsourcing the design work of NPC sites to community members who would probably come up with some interesting stuff. Of course, I know nothing about the code behind NPC sites, so I have no idea how difficult it would be to make them moddable, but could this potentially become more achievable after the map rewrite in the magic update?

Edit:
While we're on this topic, could you maybe give a little insight into how you code the procedural generation for sites like NPC dwarven fortresses?

There is a gigantic garbage dump of code involved in getting the sites together, and a lot of little things come into play (e.g. world gen resource stockpiles and industry numbers, etc.)  So it's not easy to just put it into a moddable format, and so has just accreted into whatever over time.  It is likely this will be detonated with the editors and/or map rewrite, and then we'll see.

All of the sites work a little differently, which is part of the problem.  If I recollect, and there are various complications, the dwarf sites work on stacked 48x48 layers that are given purposes (residential/stockpiles/noble etc.), with knowledge of where the central staircase is so that the main hallway connection can be maintained.  Within each 48x48, depending on the purpose, it either blocks out e.g. some industrial areas or the residential subsections, which get further divisions, and those blocks also have connection information.  There's also the farmplot stuff if there's a cavern layer, and the top (crap) "visitor/trade/entrance" block that holds the depot/library/tavern.  There isn't very much style information, but the central stairwell can either have a central hole or not, perhaps a few other things like that.  But the overall method is reasonably different from what goes on in the ~800x800 human villages; the dwarven block structures are the same as those for other subterranean sites and structures, so the humans only see those in sewers, dungeons and catacombs.  Their main structure is a "site realization building" and their own 48x48 (down to 16x16) surface blocks which carry roadway and pasture/etc. information, with more respect for surface features like rivers.

The goal eventually is to trash the distinction between the surface and the underground, since the underground layer structures as well as the surface river structures are likely toast as they stand with the map rewrite.  I'm not sure if that ends up being cubes with traits, or what, but hopefully it'll be a unit that we can act on in text.  Right now, the human/elf vs. dwarf/kob site distinction is too hard-coded and messy (with gobs in between, with their fort-like tower and the rest otherwise using more human structures, though trenches are their own thing -- but the reason we can sometimes do goblin towers in conquered human sites is because they basically work with the same framework for their typical structures.)

Will night trolls be classified as villains?

Knight Otu: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7859791#msg7859791

What exactly are necromancers getting up to as villains? Do they have more outside interaction now? Hanging out in taverns making future zombie candidate false friendships and such?

Urlance Woolsbane: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7860219#msg7860219

They are somewhat like bandits at first, yeah, though we did have some stuff in mind for them.  When vampires and necromancers were initially floated as candidate villains, the idea was to respect their natures, but it was also always time-dependent, so we'll see what happens.  Ideas were related to securing smuggled corpses from the fort, for instance, though, yeah, heh, and kidnapping pre-zombies, as you suggest.  Possibly being somewhat more ambitious in their creation of corpses, through better targeted zombie attacks and raisings and so on, to get the snowball going, though that doesn't fit with villains so much as armies.  It all blends together, though.

Are elves getting any more positions?

They don't have many basic positions, unlike dwarves and the new variable position humans and goblins, so scheming network opportunities would seem to be fewer.

Although, maybe it suits the mood to have elves fairly resiliant to the rest of the world's scheming shenanigans (besides all those who wander far from the home tree to live the dream of being a naked troupe dancer).

Yeah, this came up immediately, and I haven't done anything to change it yet.  It's not clear yet that having fewer positions makes you more or less resilient since we're also using the layers as a form of counter-intelligence/access restriction, implicitly, in some of the calculations.  Going to have to wait a bit to see how it shakes out.

Will we be able to play villains?

Shonai_Dweller: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7860421#msg7860421

Are you planning on working on Guilds and/or Societies relatively soon, now that you're trying to create reasons for people to form relationships?

KittyTac: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7860449#msg7860449
FantasticDorf: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7861886#msg7861886

These two replies are it basically -- we're definitely not jumping into guilds or other groups fully now, as we need all of the surrounding work we're planning to do later to do it properly (status, property, laws, and a lighter-weight definition of a subgroup in particular.)  At the same time, there could be bits here and there, somewhat like the new intermediate human/gob positions, that we find necessary to make people/society interesting enough for our villain networks to function.

What is your progress with villain update for this week?

If I had something to say on the 29th, I would have posted it, though yeah, I often don't make it.  The end of the month is always strange, since there's a naturally build-up -- this time, aside from FotF, Zach and I drew up 21 crayon drawings (Grandma is recovering quickly!), Tanya and I finalized the editing of our second book and sent it to the publisher, I worked on my Roguelike Celebration talk, scrambled to get up to date with Patreon rewards before the month changes (not done yet!), handled some other email, and so on and so on.  There's always a ton of stuff like this to do.

Are there plans to eventually allow for creatures with a child stage (such as insect larva) that are drastically different from the adult stage?

(Currently, this is impossible to do. But, considering the structure and description of the Purring Maggot, I have to wonder if it was originally envisioned to be the larval stage of a monstrous insect.)

Knight Otu: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7861899#msg7861899
DG: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7861970#msg7861970

Why don't you integrate the quality of life features present in dfhack (toggling priorities, planning mode, sand presence on embark to name a few) into the base game?

Fleeting Frames: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7862446#msg7862446
Shonai_Dweller: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7862455#msg7862455
MinerMan60101 (op): http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7863362#msg7863362
Putnam: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7863497#msg7863497

Bit of a self-bump here. I know that testing long-term mechanics is difficult for you due to the time required.  That said, are you aware of current issues with the new stress sytem? (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=171185.0) Based on reports here & in Reddit, stress-reducing effects seem greatly underpowered compared to stress-causing effects.

Yeah, I have that thread in my "next version / before Big Wait" text file.  I think I'll need to look at and log data on some saves for some of the problems, until we're satisfied that we understand what happened with a lot of the dwarves and their specific pathways to negativity.  It'll be interesting to see how much of a portion of the stress is caused by probably-easily fixables like those repeated vulture interruptions (which is pure combat stress, I think, rather than just stress at being interrupted, which doesn't exist) vs. more systemic changes (which'll be harder to rebalance, but are clearly needed for certain recurring thoughts and broken/missing needs.)

Will plots be able to come in multiple stages, say a person wants to be immortal and take over the world, would steal a necomancer’s slab, learn the secrets of life and death, then male an unstoppable undead army to take over the world?

On a related note, would plotters be ‘greedy’ and do opportunite things like steal a gold ring while carrying out a plot?

Some of that should happen naturally, hopefully, since the plots formed are related to the nature/goals of the villain, though they might be slow to update existing plots if they change.

Opportunistic crimes/etc. don't exist yet; it's the sort of thing that would be cool, but like adaptive combat AI, etc., it all needs to be coded in systemically and we haven't put enough time into the push and pull of transient motivations yet to get it right.

[Asin]

Will we ever get another glimpse at the myth generator? I'm pretty sure more than a few players would like to mess around with it and see what happens.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Will we ever get another glimpse at the myth generator? I'm pretty sure more than a few players would like to mess around with it and see what happens.

Ever? Of course. That's the point, isn't it?

Or do you mean ever as in 'this year'. In which case, I'd assume not what with time being tight, but maybe things will have settled down by next moth.

[Dozebôm Lolumzalěs]

Perhaps Asin means the standalone generator.

[DG]

Will we ever get another glimpse at the myth generator? I'm pretty sure more than a few players would like to mess around with it and see what happens.

Would you consider releasing a version of your standalone myth generator prototype, like you showed off at GDC? I imagine that people would appreciate something to check out during the Big Wait.

I'd prefer not to do this.  I think it both has the bar too high in some places (effect lists, at least for release one, probably) and too low in others (most everything else.)  It's not reflective enough of what I want to do, and I don't want expectations to coalesce around it overmuch.

[Urlance Woolsbane]

Will we ever get another glimpse at the myth generator? I'm pretty sure more than a few players would like to mess around with it and see what happens.

All of the pictures we've seen of it thus far have been from presentations Tarn has given. I imagine he'll do more in the future and that it will continue to feature, as it is fairly central to his vision for Dwarf Fortress. And even if he doesn't, we'll almost certainly get myth-excerpts in the numerous Dev Diary entries during the Big Wait.

That said, I don't see him releasing the prototype. He'd probably need to take time to make it user-friendly, time he could be using to work on the actual game.

[iceball3]

Thanks for the update, Toady! Here's hoping autumn treats you a little better.

[PatrikLundell]

Thanks for the answers, Toady. However, an immediate follow up:
The  +/-max (10,age/2) check for marriage would mean +max (10, age/2) to -max (10, age/3) in practice if both parties are required to pass the check. However, I can see trouble brewing if the older party tries to pursue an eligible younger one who doesn't find the older one eligible. Currently it probably doesn't matter, but if they are eventually going to act on their desires this can cause them to embark on impossible quests, in particular if the younger one doesn't reject (nor accept, naturally) an advance from someone who's already dismissed for age reasons (although, with time, they will both come within the age range, unless death happens first).
It's intended more as a potential trouble indication than an actual question.

[MetroChensual]

Will very powerful (as in endgame) adventurers be able to do the stuff a villain can do? Can they be the villains when the player no longer controls them?
Adding to that question, can a retired adventurer change occupations?

[Real_bang]

Thanks for answers Toady! Cant wait to hear your speech on roguelike celebration

[Random_Dragon]

Thanks for the answers, Toady. However, an immediate follow up:
The  +/-max (10,age/2) check for marriage would mean +max (10, age/2) to -max (10, age/3) in practice if both parties are required to pass the check. However, I can see trouble brewing if the older party tries to pursue an eligible younger one who doesn't find the older one eligible. Currently it probably doesn't matter, but if they are eventually going to act on their desires this can cause them to embark on impossible quests, in particular if the younger one doesn't reject (nor accept, naturally) an advance from someone who's already dismissed for age reasons (although, with time, they will both come within the age range, unless death happens first).
It's intended more as a potential trouble indication than an actual question.

This sounds like it'd set up a basic "unrequited love" scenario that I'm guessing would be handled by a rejection from the younger party if advances force it, possibly leading into whatever shenanigans a rejection might spark. I would assume that "other party neither accepts nor rejects, leaving the attempt in stasis" won't be intended behavior if it crops up.

I would also imagine that, if the calculation is too heavily out of whack, then either it'll eventually get treated as a bug, or appropriate reactions from third parties who become aware of this might be a planned addition.

[PatrikLundell]

@Random_Dragon: "The unrequited love" scenario is quite legitimate, but both parties should act accordingly (where completely ignoring an advance might be considered suitable, but the game should then know how to handle that if so). However, I basically asked the question to avoid it resulting in a bug, as it's typically easier to address issues while they're fresh in the mind.

[ZM5]

Regarding adventure mode pets, will the players be able to acquire one even if they don't start with one? Say, either via taming a wild animal in some way, or via buying them in some kind of new "pet store" that'd show up in sites.