Print

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

[Shonai_Dweller]

Swapping between Hearth person and Peasant is currently the only way to "select" your starting town in Adventurer (it skips to the next random town each time until you get someplace close to where you want to be). Presumably that's no longer functional with the new background profession selection? Will you add a location selection to the new interface? Or do you prefer Adventurers to always start somewhere randomly within their selected civ?

[zakarum]

Toady probably answered this before but here goes nothing:
Can demons start plots? Will they? If yes, in what conditions? would they have some special advantage to tempt people and make agents?

[PlumpHelmetMan]

I'm pretty sure any sapient creature belonging to an entity can start a plot (though I might be wrong).

[Beakromancer]

Now that I think about it, titans associated with evil regions might be able to spread them, but that begs the question:
Will certain creatures or entities be able to spread good regions?

[PlumpHelmetMan]

Toady almost certainly would've said something about that in the last devlog, so again I'm going to say no.

[EternalCaveDragon]

Well, no vanilla entities currently host creatures with the [GOOD] tag, and I think there have been mentions of the possibilities of modding the spread of regional aspects before now. Might have been my wishful imagination though.

[Renarin21]

For the Myth and Magic Update, let's say there is a world where humans are created by a precursor race, and worship them. If another race, say the dwarves, are descendants of these precursor gods, will the humans revere dwarves, or generally be more prone to viewing them as religious figures? If humans are unaware of this mythic connection, but then they become aware of it, will their attitude concerning dwarves change?

[Pillbo]

Thanks for the previous answers!

About the intelligent undead -

Do they look like corpses / talking zombies? If not does that mean you can only raise someone who recently died? Or does the spell repair their body during resurrection? 

Could I go as an adventurer to my ruined/retired fort, resurrect all my favorite dwarves and start a fort of semi-immortal undead?

[feelotraveller]

Will certain creatures or entities be able to spread good regions?

I think that the answer to this is no.

[Regretfully, in my opinion, since this moves away from sandbox play and towards setting the world as opposition/problem to overcome - the great hero purging evil at the end of a sword or the great villain enthralling all who surround them (or perhaps we can find a safe little niche and avoid it... just maybe...).  Or to put it positively  how cool would it be to actively spread good and have demons, necromancers and other assorted nasties flee before waves of unicorns, sunshine and fluffy wamblers.  But that would be another gaming paradigm, more along the lines of the player actively making the world...]

In the longer term it shouldn't matter since with the Myth and Magic update (coming soon^TM) it is spheres that will be spreading (or not) and the old good and evil biomes will be defunct.  Evil spreading is just the test case/initial prototype for all this (and Toady has probably accurately? judged the sorryness of the current crop of DF players before inflicting this upon us).

My two cents.  Happy to be corrected as usual. 

[DG]

Spreading good could get into a philosophical argument about how "good" it is to shoulder out indigenous varieties of plants and animals with good aligned versions as the sphere of influence grows.

[ZM5]

I personally kinda see good biomes in the same way as the Hallow from Terraria. It's the "good" equivalent, except its still not particularly good (I suppose a better way to describe it would be "fey") - its just as dangerous as the evil regions (atleast in Terraria, in DF, maybe not so much since the good regions are less fleshed out, unless you use mods), what with unicorns freely goring people to death and the like. So spreading good biomes would still not actually be the good thing to do.

[FantasticDorf]

Spreading good could get into a philosophical argument about how "good" it is to shoulder out indigenous varieties of plants and animals with good aligned versions as the sphere of influence grows.

I personally kinda see good biomes in the same way as the Hallow from Terraria. It's the "good" equivalent, except its still not particularly good (I suppose a better way to describe it would be "fey") - its just as dangerous as the evil regions (atleast in Terraria, in DF, maybe not so much since the good regions are less fleshed out, unless you use mods), what with unicorns freely goring people to death and the like. So spreading good biomes would still not actually be the good thing to do.

I mean if there's always some potentional perverse benefit to doing so you might want to, supernaturally ideosyncratic 'demons of light' and other light magic associated entities like that being more of a annoyance than primordial unicorns are potentially. Some benefits like extension of your life for the longetivity sphere but the areas being patrolled by bloodthirsty magical sentinels.

Others might contextually be annoying, like a sphere of music making insufferable sound which makes it hard to sleep, there's a bunch of suggestions of spheres here.

Will there be sphere created semi/mega-beasts where appropriate emerging with the wildlife (within world costing), or will they always be resorted to world generation?

I was kind of hoping to have a greater muck monster for the evil biomes pop up when the conditions were right, or inversely to the quotation, maybe a Phoenix spontaneously appear over rebirth good areas to add some danger setting things on fire with the halves of a roc and a dragon together.

Will certain creatures or entities be able to spread good regions?

I think that the answer to this is no.

Without a proper reply from Toady, until its all sorted out, i think evil biomes as they are will just be 'Primordial' until least after the changes to world generation are put in and a clean slate to make the world as they want it. But i mirror your opinion that spreading good biomes at this stage doesn't really have a purpose outside of being there for modders.

Potentially some interaction with angel vaults or shrines I abstractly think of having a higher potential chance of hosting some couter or alternative influence but thats just my own speculation.

[ZM5]

To be fair, considering we'll probably be waiting a few years for the magic update, it'd still be a useful thing for modders to allow spread of good/savage regions through certain caster types.

[Nahere]

Will summoned creatures count towards a secret holders ability to build a tower, or is that still just raised dead?

[Toady One]

If such a scenario did occur with freedom to write demons on file (at own risk obviously), would we see mainstream integration of tags like [DEMON] on lesser creatures such as fire imps with a bit more context on what defines a demonic leader vs small fry like them by using [POWER] on file, versus other definitions of player created ambient wildlife and intelligent races  that may be demonic themselves?

voliol: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7990503#msg7990503

Yeah, I haven't gone back to the fire imp, but it's not unreasonable, assuming they are more demonic than magma-oriented, which isn't something we thought very deeply about.

If I understood it well, Dwarf Fortress is currently "three-games-in-one", because each one of them has different mechanisms. For implementing the new villain features, you begun to modify worldgen in first place, after that you'll change some adventure mode things and in last place you'll do the same in fortress mode.
However, I suppose in th future "three games" could melt in one and you could modify anything in worldgen that would make changes directly into adventure and fortress modes (it would be ideal).
So, these are my cuestions:
In what degree are the three games currently connected at the development level?
What elements of the world generation could be reflected in both modes automatically after their modification?
And is it possible to achieve a definitive fusion that could in a way facilitate your work?

PatrikLundell: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7991433#msg7991433
FrankVill (op): http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7991727#msg7991727
PlumpHelmetMan: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7991885#msg7991885

Yeah, they are separate for some core reasons, but there's already a lot of cross-over, and new sorts of modes or half-modes might happen in the future that feel like they are further blending the lines, whether that's more passage of time and the control of more people in adventure mode, or a deity sort of mode that feels more like influencing legends/active-world than playing a fort or adv.  Right now that would just be cursing people (or selecting die roll outcomes), which would be amusing but limited, but the possibilities are going to just keep coming, and turning my own crufty 'world debug' mode into a deity game is not all that complicated, aside from adding more things to do and making the world interesting to visit.  Something like the return of schedules etc. feels semi-necessary, because people really do just do nothing most of the time, and it would be fairly boring to drop in on them, or at least strange.

1.Is unlocking hidden legends still going to be one of the ways that you expect players to measure progression?

2. Is there ever going to be an option to hide only part of the legends?

Currently, I have to choose between knowing where every secret artifact was stashed, versus not even knowing if my native civ is at war with anyone.

I can see a number of ways to come at this, from hiding any secret legends and those over 100 years old, to just randomly hiding 50% of all legends data, so players have something to unlock, while still being able to somewhat get their bearings.

Shonai_Dweller: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7993594#msg7993594

There was that distant time when legends mode was going to be about the information you've uncovered in all of your games, but it's really moved away from that - and the volume of information is so large now (and mostly uninteresting by itself) that that seems fine.  However, when we get to the origin of the world and the big ticket secrets, that seems like something we'll definitely be doing again.  For all of the other little secrets, yeah, I dunno.  There's a lot of stuff you kind of shouldn't know now, concerning plots and so forth, but legends mode doesn't read well without them.  It might be something more like letting you look at a sort of legends mode from the other modes, with only the things you should know, which I think was always in the cards but has some difficulties in terms of information tracking.

This brings to mind a question - will non-animal zombies be able to take commands now as well? In order for them to grab and use weapons, armor, etc.

They don't currently, though it is a weird gray area until we get better magic foundations in and I'm not sure how it'll turn out even in the short term, if more tweaks happen.

Can we pet the intelligent undead that we raise aswell?

I don't think so, but I haven't tried.

Will random (possibly recruitable) NPCs have mounts/pets now, or is that just for the adventurer party members? Will it be possible to assign/give mounts to your party members?

I haven't changed more broadly who has them, nor done additional companion stuff with them.  There's a ton of stuff to do there, but I'm not sure what I'll get to now for this time.

Can intelligent undead raised by necromancers end up in romantic or friendly relationships with other people around them?

It would be hilarious if a mortal npc attempted to flirt with the undead, only to realize their mistake too late, or the undead got outed because someone tried to grab their hand and realized they're dead cold

is the petting interaction just a bp_bump interaction available to humanoids by default? Or is there something new or special about it, like an emotional response from either the petter or the pettee?

I don't recall if romance is specifically off limits to them (there is probably a zombie check which might hit them), but the rest should be good.

I don't have a specific emotional reaction for the pettee/petter or anything that distinguishes it yet, but it's only a matter of time.  It was life-affirming to see my other party members petting the party pets right when I started.

How exactly does a historical figure choose to divorce their spouse in worldgen? Is it based on their current relationship 'status', civilization ethics, general personality, or something else entirely? Are all divorces now 'mutual' in the sense that both parties wish to end the relationship, or is it possible for only one partner to end the marriage?

FantasticDorf: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7996468#msg7996468

It is highly not complicated right now.  There are tens of thousands of them going, so we really just plop them in and out.  The new intrigue relationships occur at a much lower volume (in the hundreds or slightly more), so they can be tracked with the new detail, and the same is true of all fort mode relationships, but I haven't gotten to those yet.

Will we be able to form relationships with our animals in adventure mode or are they always serventile for the adventurer mode editor?

For mainly concerns about accidentally escalating combat with your animals accidental or otherwise, maybe with unrelated wild animals like i mentioned above with elves welcoming enough to let us get close.

This is also relevant to me. I created "familiars" for my wizards, they're intelligent, and the wizards relationship with their familiar is important i.e. it would be a disaster if they got into a no-yield fight. Or if that bug about starting a fight again immediately after agreeing to end one isn't fixed.

On a related note, can intelligent creatures be used as mounts if they have the tags and are, like, amiable towards the person mounting them? I.e. my familiar has a transformation into a mountable form, retaining their intelligence. Will the game balk at my silliness?

I don't quite understand the first question.  If you select a pet in the character generation screen, it has a pet relationship, like the ones from fort mode.  Regarding the intelligent party members, that might be more appropriate as an actual party member?  Though I agree that any weird conflict behavior should be cleaned up.  I haven't brought myself to attacking my own test pets yet.

I don't think it'll let you ride intelligent things because they aren't tame in the technical flag sense.  Hmm, maybe having "MOUNT" or "MOUNT_EXOTIC" should be sufficient for companions/party members.  Although this makes me curious why I was even able to ride my undead mount.  Perhaps the flag carried over after the raise?  I will note it down.

Will linux version of df be available on stream?

therahedwig: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7995993#msg7995993

Yeah, I'm not committing on day-one linux or Mac until I'm much further down the line, since I need to see what happens with the graphics and other updates.  There might be unexpected problems I'm not equipped to handle.

With the upcoming "interrogations" to deal with villainous plots, will the player and the AI:

1) Be able to interrogate or "test" (such as a cut to see if it bleeds or even touch to see if its warm) prisoners they suspect of being vampires/undead? In the past you mention the intelligent undead could be captured and if freed, they'd carry on living as normal but they would eventually flee when people start noticing they don't age.
2) If 1 turns out to be true, will civs finally get a way of getting rid of the undead/vampires, such as burning them at the stake? AFAIK the only thing that happens now is that people get suspicious and they flee, but that's it.
3) Since assassinations can happen in player-led forts and since capture and interrogation of agents will be a thing, will we be possible to capture unconscious enemies? Think of an assassination that goes bad: the assassin turns into an invader, the alarm is sound, a military squad would rush and get to the assassin. Right now they would chop them to pieces, but I imagine what we are aiming at is at having him disabled and captured.
4) If 3 is true, will we be able to capture disabled soldiers of invading forces (such as goblins)? Any plans for that (interrogations, etc) if that's the case?
5) Finally, still related to 3, will there be an "alarm" system now? What I mean is, if the assassin succeeds in killing his target but doesn't sneak fast enough, someone discovers the body. The player will be alerted, like when dwarfs are found drained out of blood, but will the dwarfs try and find some authority to tell it, which can then try and find the culprit, or it will all be left for the player?

We already have means to capture enemies (cage traps), so the question [#4] really becomes two:
a) Will we get fortress (and adventurer) means to subdue enemies for capture as an alternative to attack to kill?
Apart from capture for interrogation, such an option might allow you to capture tantrumers for expulsion (or performance troupe enemy civ effective spies for interrogation).
b) Will interrogation of captured enemies have a chance to provide any information that can be acted on?
(Such as e.g. something that provides us with an assassination target or other information that might be used in the conflict). Most of the time I'd expect you won't get anything beyond their civ and the settlement they assembled in, plus the name of their [usually completely expendable] leader of the attack if you'd be able to interrogate them, though. Grunts simply aren't told much.

zakarum (op): http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7996937#msg7996937
ZM5: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7996938#msg7996938
zakarum (op): http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7997243#msg7997243

This is basically all stuff that we are deciding right now as we head toward the adventurer investigation stage.  So I don't yet have anything to offer here, other than that a lot of this is sitting on the plate and we're not going to get to all of it, but we'll very likely get to a portion of it.  Almost certainly you'll be able to capture and interrogate even traditionally kill-on-site hostiles in fort mode, and use the information provided, dwarf mode counterintelligence being one of the ways the fort-mode player will be able to interact with the new systems.  But yeah, away from the plots, just with regular enemies, I expect we'll be more in the territory of witnesses to random events and so forth, plot tidbits at random, that kind of thing.  I don't have specifics, as this is the part of adv mode investigation and what happens there is going to determine more or less what non-plot people have to offer in fort mode (whether they are captured, or just travelers you question, or whatever.)

Will the Steam version come with any sort of in-game tutorial? Just asking since I know that's something a lot of people have wanted out of DF ever since its inception, and a commercial release just seems to me like a good occasion to finally implement one. Maybe you're still undecided either way at this point, which is fine.

Manveru Taurënér: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7996843#msg7996843
PlumpHelmetMan (op): http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7996846#msg7996846

1)Will the new aquifer changes means it could be viable not to use constructed walls but instead construct a drainage system of grates and underground tunnels that naturally drain the aquifer somewhere else? Or will the water flow be too much for dwarfs to go through?
2)Will water someday seep through constructed walls, albeit at a slower rate the more walls there are between the aquifer/water source and the walls, making drainage systems for mines an actual necessity?
3)Will different kinds of rocks have different rates of permeability, affecting the speed that water seeps through the aquifer, or it will always be a fixed rate?

PatrikLundell: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7997291#msg7997291
Whatsifsowhatsit: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7997299#msg7997299
zakarum (op): http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7997324#msg7997324
PatrikLundell: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7997366#msg7997366

1) Yeah, you can do this.  You have to eventually get the water out to, say, the caverns or wherever, because it does fill up confined spaces over time.  But a diligent mining crew can take care of it.  You can't just leave it alone for any period of time though, so you have to start with a plan, I think, if you're not going to construct walls.  In my very limited experience with it, if you set a miner working, they'll be able to outpace the flow of water easily enough for you to get the water shunted off to the cavern, but it is a little project for them, as relying simply on one vertical tunnel can work but is also hazardous, since it doesn't take long for the water to pool at the bottom to 4 or higher.  If there's a bit of adaptation and the rare drowning for beginners, I think that's about right.  Hopefully we home in on that.  Though perhaps even then the loss of a pick is harsh for new people.  It does still pop up the aquifer warning on embark, he he he.
2) If we can get around the annoyances (as PatrikLundell enumerated), this seems reasonable enough.
3) Ideally in the future, yeah, though right now it is very simple and has nothing to do with that.

Do you have plans to add food preserving to the game?

DG: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7997529#msg7997529

More generally, yes, variously, but no time table.

Can zombies raised by a player necromancer mount on a horse (or zombie horse)?

When a necromancer gets kicked out of a site, can they migrate to a player fort?

I heard that the soundtrack for the steam version is already done. Do you know if we can get to listen to some songs from it before the steam release, looking at how long that's still gonna take, or is that just Kitfox' decision?

Is there any chance players will get access to some of your DF debugging tools? They would probably be very useful for modders. Also kinda related to this, being able to take control of any historic figure in adventure mode would be really nice for roleplaying.

Edit: Just found someone wondering about this on reddit:
Does the aquifer speed change also affect the rate at which they are able to absorb water?

Mounts:  Nope.  They don't think to do it.  At least, I don't think they do.

Migrants:  That seems possible.  There could be some archaic check against it, but they were much more eager to leave their home sites immediately before, so it might not have come up.  Though I do recall there were some town clutches of them even in the older versions.

Soundtrack:  That's all up to them, and I think it'll be happening later in the process.

Tools:  As new modes and things go in, the god-like world debug mode might become available.  It's not really ready for that though, since it's very haphazard with the usual checks/etc. itself, since making it playable was not the concern.

Aquifer:  I haven't changed anything about aquifer absorb rates, though I did see that or a similar comment at the time and made a note.  Though I don't really remember the code in question and am not sure what'll end up happening yet.

When adding Tavern games, will you be adding board games as a subgenre? I'd love to get some games of Settlers of Catan in on my Dwarven carved bone set.

I'm not sure I'll be able to handle the proc AI if the games get too complicated, but we've noted down several branches of boardgames, from the racing games to the chess variants and so forth, and we'll see what plays at all and what doesn't and how far are variants and generation can spread practically.  The AI doesn't have to be good or even passable, but it has to be feel a certain way, and it's not easy to do even/especially a beginner AI on certain types of games.

Question about the "summon" interaction that was mentioned - how will they work exactly? Will the summoned creatures innately spawn with armor/clothes (if intelligent, anyway) and will they be loyal to the caster who summoned them? Would there also be a possible time limit on how much they linger, as well as a limit on how many could be summoned at a time?

They don't start with items.  They don't have a loyalty either; the necromancer can cheat here because the night creatures all get along with each other to some extent, so the necromancer simply isn't targeted.  There is a time limit and a cooldown (the old WAIT_PERIOD style cooldown.)  It doesn't take a number-to-summon parameter currently, but the effect could be copied to increase the number.

"Evil that spread now fades away over many years if there's no new activity in the region. The primordial evil areas don't fade. Certain demons can now spread evil from their towers (or disaster forts), and the properties of the evil areas are related to the spheres of the demon. That is, a blight demon might kill vegetation, while a deformity demon can spread evil creature populations and wormy eyeball grass and so forth. "

With that part of the blog mentioned above, will there be tags related to the ability for demons to spread their evil from their towers/forts? Like a tag that allows/disallows a demons that controls a specific, and custom Dark Fortress using Race from spreading evil?

And with these new "abilities", does that mean theres more to play with for custom secrets?

There are new interaction effects.  I didn't want to get into the specific mechanics of evil spreading, since it's bound to be rewritten when we do the map and magic stuff, but there is a simple caste tag for it.  To avoid processor trouble, it only works for civ-leaders though.  The necromancer evil-death spread effect from animation is still hard-coded.