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[therahedwig]

Thanks for the answers! Sounds like the potential map rewrite could really speed up the game too(as long players aren't necessarily making the map huge).

Thank you for another big post, Toady!  I rarely play DF nowadays but I still read all the devlogs with relish.

A question about your general vision (not the short-time stuff):
Many stories and games (both video and PnP) implicitly involve some level of "dramatic convenience", e.g. a mayor's daughter gets kidnapped just as your party is visiting the town, or you stay at a tavern and just happen to overhear a villainous plan, or the protagonist randomly finds a magic McGuffin ring in a river.  What is your opinion on such things?  Would you include an option for the game to behave that way (to nudge/induce interesting events) if you could?  Is it even doable?  The kidnapped daughter example above, for instance, would involve rewriting the near past, as the game can't predict which town will you visit next, and the kidnapping has to happen in advance.
I'm asking because in real life epic adventures are rare, and I fear a realistic medieval simulation may be a tad boring.
I remember you mentioning an option to stop worldgen just as something big is about to occur, but it's not quite the same thing as it fits the player to the world, not the other way around.

Try playing adventure mode sometime, the rumour system ensures you're always aware of something, and the world activation makes it so there's always something happening. It might not always be something you can do, and eventually megabeasts will run out, but villains will always crop up, I suspect.

Another question, on the myth generator:
As there are going to be various race-creation myths, is a good old Darwinesque natural selection on the table?  Either as a divine myth ("the mountain apes were our holy ancestors and diligent work made them into what we are now"), or as something scholars could discover (even contrary to preexisting myths)?  Or is it not medieval enough?

Not really an answer, but we didn't evolve from gorillas? (We share a common ancestor that as far as I can tell looked like a tailed monkey) Still that'd imply that mythgen takes into account tens and thousands of years.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Added to above (sorry, copy-paste-cut on this damn phone makes quoting bits and pieces hard).

Remember that Dwarf Fortress is as much about other people's adventures as about yours. If you happen to wander into town just as the mayor is searching for someone to go fetch his kidnapped daughter, then fine, it's your story. But the world is full of other adventurer parties. The mayor will hire one of those and Dwarf Fortress will still be fulfilling it's intention of procedural generation of generic fantasy stories. You'll just have to hear about it afterwards or pick it out of Legends.

Also, if you've ever played in a world featuring a bunch of kidnapping civs, you'll know how quickly kidnapping epidemics can erupt. There's always someone who needs rescuing.

[Random_Dragon]

Interesting answers as usual.

Yeah, I don't recall the specifics but this is very likely to just be unfinished features mishmashed with me maybe thinking I was going to be able to add e.g. adv mode medical and didn't in fact get to it (which has happened a few times).  Hopefully it will come to make sense over time.  As Shonai_Dweller mentions, we have another good crack at it slated in the possible near-term dev section, and how that plays out is going to depend on what stuff feels like after the villain release etc. etc. dust settles.

Understandable, yeah.

[Dragonslayerelf]

Just a few questions
1) When will you be able to butcher sentient creatures after an ethics change and then use the gleaned bones/meat to make food/bone goods?
2) Can features that aren't planned to work for Dwarves specifically still be encoded, especially for modders and fiddlers?
3) Are there any plans for making cobaltite useful?
4) Are there plans for a thievery/stealth skill for stealth squads which you can use against your enemies to steal artifacts (like Kobolds & Goblins) as well as babystealing missions should you choose to go evil or modify your ethics to allow that?
5) Are there plans to fix the glitches related to fortress mode necromancers where the things they revive are still hostile to them?

Lime-green if these are questions for Toady

1) When any bug is fixed. Some time in the future - No fixed schedule.

2) All features are to be used with non-Dwarves. Post Mythgen, we'll get world's without dwarves at all to play with (besides, Adventurer is already non-Dwarves). You should probably ask something more specific here.

4) Current release. Send a squad, it uses stealthy skills to steal artifacts (and socks, and camels). (Babysnatching isn't in yet, but apparently it uses the same structures, so could be switched on easily enough).

5) Bugs are not features. They are actually unintentional. As a result, contrary to popular belief, there are plans to fix bugs. Because, they are bugs. No schedule obviously.

Edit
To clarify somewhat.
Bugs are generally looked at when that part of the game is being worked on. So, magic will feature a whole bunch of master-zombie relationship work which increases the chances of bugs being looked at then.

On the other hand, Toady sometimes just fixes bugs if he feels like it during the inter-development bug-fixing phases especially if they don't involve majorly rewriting everything.
But, best not to hold your breath for your particular pet bug to be addressed here. Bug tracker is hundreds of pages long...

Oh, thank you! Sorry if they were kinda stupid questions, but I figured I'd throw my questions in just to see what the response would be.

[therahedwig]

Nah, it's just customary to help answer other people's questions, especially for stuff that gets asked often. We cannot expect everyone to read every FotF reply, and this way you don't have to wait till the end of the month.

[DG]

1. I'm up for rewording it, but I think the reputation type has a place in the game.  It's a specific and rare thing, killing people, and it has its own meaning.  It's not about capability of "killing things", but more about the act of taking a life, which, though it might be justified, is a non-trivial matter and might change how people view you (hence, a reputation), not that this has yet jelled in any significant way in the game.  But I think there are important distinctions to be made here, on top of murderer/hunter/hero reps (and a hero rep in particular won't always be purely death related.)

This was one of the most interesting question/answers. I agree that it's not a trivial thing even when justified and it's cool that the intention is to flesh it out in future. I'm reminded of a scene in Big Trouble in Little China after Jack shoots someone and then kinda stops in a daze as the enormity of it starts to settle on him. Eddie asks him if it's the first time he's "plugged" someone. "Course not!" 

[Button]

So if I recall correctly, this villain update was originally intended to be the last update before a Long Wait. Given how much it's ballooned, are you still planning to start the Long Wait as soon as it's finished? Or are you considering this its own Long Wait that you'll be doing rapid-fire bugfixes after?

[Shonai_Dweller]

So if I recall correctly, this villain update was originally intended to be the last update before a Long Wait. Given how much it's ballooned, are you still planning to start the Long Wait as soon as it's finished? Or are you considering this its own Long Wait that you'll be doing rapid-fire bugfixes after?

No, that was never the plan. And still isn't.
Dev notes clearly note a whole bunch of pre-Mythgen updates that haven't been touched upon yet.

Whether he'll get to any of them now is up in the air (though he mentioned it's still possible last month) but there'll certainly be a continuation of the bug fix releases after the first Villains pass.

The point of the current phase is to get the game into an interesting, relatively robust, fun state before the Big Wait begins. Not to throw a bug-filled bunch of Villains at us and say 'see y'all in 2022!'

[Untrustedlife]

Will you ever make the myth generator you showed off at GDC in 2016 downloadable? I would quite enjoy playing with it and modding it and stuff. I am a game dev myself so it would be cool to just read through a few of the creation myths (without having to read only screenshots) just have a little text blurb that says, "THIS DOES NOT REPRESENT THE FINAL MYTH GENERATOR AT ALL!" In bold next to the link to stave off any untoured expectations or some such.

If you dont want to i get it, maybe just share a couple more screenshots then?
Maybe explain a bit of how it works,
I understand its agent based and turn based correct?
Will the final one work the same?
If its agent based and turn based, Would the player ever be allowed to pop into one of the gods during creation to take their "turns" for them, as that is a "role" people would want to play, that would be a fun mini game. Probably a messy interface though.

[Witty]

Will you ever make the myth generator you showed off at GDC in 2016 downloadable? I would quite enjoy playing with it and modding it and stuff. I am a game dev myself so it would be cool to just read through a few of the creation myths (without having to read only screenshots) just have a little text blurb that says, "THIS DOES NOT REPRESENT THE FINAL MYTH GENERATOR AT ALL!" In bold next to the link to stave off any untoured expectations or some such.

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.

[Untrustedlife]

Do you plan to ever give dungeons/sewers/catacombs proper animal populations/incursions? It would be cool to fight the giant rats in the sewer/basement  (prolific fantasy trope)
Priest:  “yeah so the giant rats built a nest in the catacombs, could you clear it out for us”
All thats really in dungeons/catacombs right now is some criminals, sometimes,and ultra rarely some kobolds and even more ultra rarely other random historical monsters that have moved in, rarely some animal men,  who half the time don't even initiate the combat. And the occasional tomb with a mummy.

[Knight Otu]

Do you plan to ever give dungeons/sewers/catacombs proper animal populations/incursions? It would be cool to fight the giant rats in the sewer/basement  (prolific fantasy trope)
Priest:  “yeah so the giant rats built a nest in the catacombs, could you clear it out for us”

Sewers at least were going to have animal populations. The devlog noted that hippos had moved into a particular one. Not sure what went wrong there that they don't dwell there now.

[Untrustedlife]

Do you plan to ever give dungeons/sewers/catacombs proper animal populations/incursions? It would be cool to fight the giant rats in the sewer/basement  (prolific fantasy trope)
Priest:  “yeah so the giant rats built a nest in the catacombs, could you clear it out for us”

Sewers at least were going to have animal populations. The devlog noted that hippos had moved into a particular one. Not sure what went wrong there that they don't dwell there now.

Thats part of why im asking.

[Eric Blank]

Do you recall what inspired some of the cavern critters in the next_underground file? Like where did you get the idea for green devourers, voracious cave crawlers, or molemarians? What even is a draltha?

[PlumpHelmetMan]

Some of them are pretty clearly inspired by D&D monsters (hungry heads for instance are obviously vargouilles, just furrier and without the nightmarish reproductive biology). I'll venture a guess that green devourers and cave crawlers might be loosely inspired by otyughs and carrion crawlers respectively, in appearance at least. Things as weird as molemarians and dralthas though still stump me, I guess only Toady can say what their inspiration was.