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[Eric Blank]

Stuff like columnar basalts on lower levels topped with a bubbly/pillow basalt layer sounds awesome, just have to have the game know that the topmost layer of a basalt complex needs to have pillow basalt artwork and the lower levels should be columnar. Iirc more geological formations will be represented, maybe like volcanic sills and dikes, artwork for them might not strictly be necessary since they would presumably be groups of solid blocks of a material, but if I were to do sills and dikes, I would put little vein-like intrusion spreading out from the solid blocks into the surrounding rocks, like

####
#######    #
###   #######
########
###    ###########
###########     #
#######
###

Where the # is the pixels of the veiny intrusion and the blank space is the bedrock it's intruding into, complete with a couple pixels of the bedrock engulfed in the intrusion, which happens often.

This would also look good around the edges of adamantine veins!

[PatrikLundell]

A few reasonably near time technical questions that may not have been decided on yet:

As far as I understand, the CP437 character set is going to be replaced with a wider set.
1A. Is the set going to be the same for actual text as for character graphics?
1B. Is the set going to be fixed size (e.g. 16 bit), or variable size (e.g. Unicode)?
1C. If the set(s) has been decided on, can you tell us what it is?

I have gotten the impression that the current set of 15 colors is going to be replaced by a wider set(s).
2A. I've seen indications that named colors will be usable, would that be in addition to RGB or instead of RGB?
2B. If both versions are supported, will you be able to use one or the other at will, or will each color usage situation have a fixed definition (or some being fixed and some variable)?
2C. Assuming named colors can be used, would they be fixed or defined in a RAW file where the users can add additional ones for use in RAWs?

[MalroktheIII]

Time for my newest round of stupid, far off, likely already asked, questions for you!
1:When you change world gen for the myth arc, what specific geographic features are you hoping for (either in general, or in particular)
2: With said new world gen, do you have any thoughts on how will biomes work? If you are planning a change on that front, what?
3: How long until you have working evolution (joke question, but still)
Bonus question: 1&2, but with alternate planes.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Time for my newest round of stupid, far off, likely already asked, questions for you!
1:When you change world gen for the myth arc, what specific geographic features are you hoping for (either in general, or in particular)
2: With said new world gen, do you have any thoughts on how will biomes work? If you are planning a change on that front, what?
3: How long until you have working evolution (joke question, but still)
Bonus question: 1&2, but with alternate planes.

Alternate planes, flying islands, sphere based areas replacing generic Good and Bad biomes. Better rock.

Yeah, it's been mentioned before, but would take a while to drag out everything again from the depths of fotf, so may as well get a new answer.

(Planes discussed with enthusiasm in the Q&A talk thing he did the other day, perhaps as part of the after chat, I forget):

Interview:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/655224456
Starts at about 9:46

After talk:
https://youtu.be/kEtAaGvXO6M

[Wieniawa]

Two questions:
1) Is it likely that the game will move to an open development with volunteers working on particular parts of the game, like how it currently has external artists for the Steam version? Current development is very slow, I imagine it must be very hard, perhaps that would help?
2) Any chance that the adventure mode will become more like The Sims soon? I cannot think of any roguelikes where you can just live a life in a fantasy world. I’m not interested in combat at all, but would like to play as a craftsman, have a family, build a house, that sort of things. But above all I would love to live in a dynamic, realistic world. Is that, at least partly, the focus?

[Bumber]

1) Is it likely that the game will move to an open development with volunteers working on particular parts of the game, like how it currently has external artists for the Steam version? Current development is very slow, I imagine it must be very hard, perhaps that would help?

For anything relating to DF's code, Toady's answer is "absolutely not".

[Shonai_Dweller]

1) Is it likely that the game will move to an open development with volunteers working on particular parts of the game, like how it currently has external artists for the Steam version? Current development is very slow, I imagine it must be very hard, perhaps that would help?

For anything relating to DF's code, Toady's answer is "absolutely not".

See the talk I linked just above (after talk part) to watch Toady tackle that question again (including info on what bits he might actually open source). More of a "players want to play with this stuff" than a "I need help" thing though. Pretty sure he doesn't feel like he needs any help.

--edit
Or was it the main talk? I forget. Watch it all! Then post questions on anything he didn't cover. 

[Luckyowl]

hi, I just have small suggestion. I am not sure if someone suggested this before, but it would be nice if we could get a description of a civs and groups flags when we open up their history in legends mode. I hate having to hunt them down and what's worst is not being able to see other groups symbols that aren't civs like bandits, criminals organizations, guilds, merchants, mercenaries, and sects.

And also will you be able to implement it in 47.05? Doesn't feel all that difficult since the information of these groups symbols are already in the game, all it need is to be reveal Or will it destroy the whole code if you do?

[Shonai_Dweller]

hi, I just have small suggestion. I am not sure if someone suggested this before, but it would be nice if we could get a description of a civs and groups flags when we open up their history in legends mode. I hate having to hunt them down and what's worst is not being able to see other groups symbols that aren't civs like bandits, criminals organizations, guilds, merchants, mercenaries, and sects.

And also will you be able to implement it in 47.05? Doesn't feel all that difficult since the information of these groups symbols are already in the game, all it need is to be reveal Or will it destroy the whole code if you do?

Suggestions in suggestions forum.

Also, check the several thousand other suggestions there which probably wouldn't take much time to put into 47.05 if Toady were to only pick one of them. Not sure being able to see a flag would be considered a priority over, say, stress issues.

[PatrikLundell]

Prompted by a recent interview somebody linked to (thanks!), where world gen branching was mentioned: Have you considered getting someone to help you with running a number of profiler and analysis tools over DF, in particular world gen, to track down uninitialized variables and other potential issues the tools may find?

Another grunt task that might be given to others would be crash replication, where the assistant would perform the repeat job of trying to get the crashes to show up, and then hand over the computer with the debugger at the crash location to you. That might not be very suitable at the moment, though, given that it would probably have to be done at your place. It may also require a fair number of computers for parallel crash generation attempts.

[Iä! RIAKTOR!]

What spheres can change surroundings into evil? What effect have each of this spheres?

[Beag]

1. In the steam release will items in our inventory in adventure mode have their tile symbol next to them so we can get a cursory idea of what they look like without having to examine them?
2. Will we ever be able to start out as members of goblin or necromancer civilizations before the magic release when such things become irrelevant?
3. Sometime in the far future will our adventurers be able to further manage the hamlets they create? Maybe being able to appoint things like administrators or law makers or any position beyond hearth person?
4. For me at least adventure mode tends to crash after spending time in large cities when I try to save the game causing me to loose progress. To minimize lost progress will adventure mode ever get an auto save feature that periodically drops down a save of the game?

[PatrikLundell]

1. In the steam release will items in our inventory in adventure mode have their tile symbol next to them so we can get a cursory idea of what they look like without having to examine them?
2. Will we ever be able to start out as members of goblin or necromancer civilizations before the magic release when such things become irrelevant?
3. Sometime in the far future will our adventurers be able to further manage the hamlets they create? Maybe being able to appoint things like administrators or law makers or any position beyond hearth person?
4. For me at least adventure mode tends to crash after spending time in large cities when I try to save the game causing me to loose progress. To minimize lost progress will adventure mode ever get an auto save feature that periodically drops down a save of the game?

1. This is a suggestion for the Suggestions thread.
2. Necros create site governments, not civs, which probably makes it tricky to start as a necro site member.
3. While rather suggestiony as well, the gradual blending of adventure mode (growing from single to party so far, plus some professions) indicates the trend might continue, although the different time scales will cause issues at some point. On the other end of the spectrum we have desires for players to control civs, or at least a somewhat autonomous civ section, not just a single site (e.g. to engage in conquest that actually makes use of the conquered sites). Starting Scenarios will add variations to the fortress game play, but if adventure mode is going to get some time as well, site management would be a logical candidate.
4. Auto saving as a means to protect against crashing while saving is asking for save corruption when the crash happens in the middle of the save (not that common with DF, but still). Also, this is a suggestion, not really a FotF question. Providing saves with bug reports that can reliably replicate crashes is the best way to help eliminate crashes, which is better than trying to invent means to reduce their impact.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Yeah, autosave would be nice, but fixing the crash bugs in large cities would be way more useful. 

[ror6ax]

Hi there!

1.Can you briefly speak about how the UX work is going to be organised, what will be general direction/inspirations of the design etc.

2.The http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=173474.0 thread to discuss graphics is absolutely awesome, could we get same thing for UX yay/nay type of feedback and ideation? 

3.Are there any sounds/music to preview yet?