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[Manveru Taurënér]

While babynamescube and themeaningofthename claims that origin of the name, the Norwegian statistics bureau says there are 0 Tarns in Norway (you can search for names on their site). Isn't the true origin just the noun "tarn" meaning "pond, small lake"?

(There are also 0 people with the first name Tjern/Tjörn, which is Norwegian for "tarn", so I doubt the origin of the name is Norwegian immigrants changing their names by direct translation. It technically could still be Norwegian somehow, but my bet is on some conjuring of information along the line, and then sites copying another without facts-checking.)

Could possibly be a nickname turned name from Tor-Arne or Thorarinn, but yeah, could just as well just be made up from the word tarn.

[Shonai_Dweller]

There are other people named Tarn (Wikipedia lists a few, but as testament to how rare it is, only two people on that list have it as a first name, one of whom is Toady).

Also a submarine (nearly):
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HNLMS_Tijgerhaai_(P336)

[falcc]

Someone other than Toady probably already knows this one.

If you only travel by night, sneak well, swim through sewers to avoid leaving tracks, and stay out of sight the entire time can you keep the artifacts you steal from generating rumors of their actual location indefinitely? If you manage to keep the rumors down this way could you still return the item for positive reputation or does there need to be intervening rumors about it being taken?

[Shonai_Dweller]

Someone other than Toady probably already knows this one.

If you only travel by night, sneak well, swim through sewers to avoid leaving tracks, and stay out of sight the entire time can you keep the artifacts you steal from generating rumors of their actual location indefinitely? If you manage to keep the rumors down this way could you still return the item for positive reputation or does there need to be intervening rumors about it being taken?

You can always just take on a secret identity to steal the artifact. Then return it as yourself. So long as no-one saw you, you should be OK.

But still, some more technical info on how rumours travel would surely be interesting.

[Cruxador]

In the recent images, the UI for zones doesn't represent hotkeys. Is this a decision that was made for aesthetic reasons, are details of the keyboard controls being reconsidered (and meaning that hotkey representation could change a lot), or is it just not there currently for another reason? Are there any particular thoughts about how keyboard usability will change in the steam/itch version? Most everything I've seen is about the new UI stuff, but personally this is one of the screens where I haven't memorized them and find it handy to have them listed. I'm sure there will also be plenty of new players who don't know that stuff but would rather use keyboard either for general efficiency or accessibility (mouse requires far greater manual abilities), so making that stuff easy to see is handy.

[PatrikLundell]

Toady has earlier answered that the Character version of screens won't be considered in any detail until the principles have been worked out (if a widget turns out not to be that great, it's a waste to make a Character version of it as well). It's also been mentioned that key bindings will be thrown up in the air and reworked as part of the UI rework, so the particular key a function is bound to may very well change, but since key bindings are just that, displaying the key currently bound would reflect whatever the key is currently bound to. The optimistic interpretation is that key bindings won't be included in screens until the actual functionality has been decided upon, while the pessimistic one is that it will be put off until after the last minute, and won't make it in, as Toady's key support wordings have been less than reassuring.
All that's been said so far indicates that the key binding functionality would be identical between the Premium and the Classic version, so if one version requires a mouse equivalent the other one does as well (it can be noted that a key binding widget should work identically in Tile Set as well as Character mode, with only the tiles used for potential decoration of the widget differing).

[txtsd]

Quote from: nenjin on October 25, 2017 at 08:03:05 am

    The last few years browsers have started more aggressively notifying you when the connection is insecure.

    I spend a lot of time on these forums and I know others do as well. Is there anyway we could get the forum running on HTTPS? I think it'd make a lot of us feel safer browsing on the forums.

    Thanks!


Yeah, we've been looking at that, but it's a mess.  Once the next release is up and stabilized, we might take some time with it, since it'll be a long process -- we also have to upgrade other aspects of the server to get the next SMF patch to work.

According to people that have looked at what's being sent back and forth, I'd recommend making sure you don't use your username/password combination elsewhere if you are using the forum on coffee shop wifi or something.

Looks like a forum update was queued but forgotten about, will you be getting around to this soon?
EDIT: I'm primarily interested in getting us up on https.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Just wondering as I don't see it on the Steam page anywhere, are you dropping the whole "Slaves to Armok, God of Blood" subtitle thing for Steam release?

Although, I guess it's nowhere on Bay12 site either, so maybe that means nothing...

[Buttery_Mess]

I've recently, finally, taken the opportunity to have a "deep play" and actually use almost all the gameplay features available as of 0.47.04 (except minecarts, which I've never got around to being able to usefully implement). Consequently I've been paying more attention to the UI quirks.

Currently certain screens, like the military screen, do not scale with increased window size. Will all screens be fully scaleable in the Steam release, and therefore, will all screens be fully scaleable in the legacy release?

Several screens currently lock important information away from the player. For exaple, when a liason springs the barony nomination on you, there's no way to browse dwarf personalities and such like before leaving the nomination screen. You get a similar situation on the trade good requests screen. Will these screens be rethought for the next release? Either as a pop-up, a returnable-to prompt, nested unit screen menu or nested stock screen menu? I ask because it seems like at this point, you'll be forced to rethink just to make it graphical.

There are some elements of the UI that don't seem to be working as intended. For example, I noted that it's not possible to select generic leather as a material for shields or shell as a material for leggings on the military>uniform screen (or if it is there, it's rather hard to find.) I suppose my question is, are you planning on redesigning the interface as you tart it up in order to wring out all the quirks and bugs, or just tart it up, or tart it up and fix quirks and bugs, but not going so far as a complete redesign?

I have seen that you've already added nice features to the embark screen. I wondered if the trade menu was going to get similar treatment? I was buying gemstones earlier and this involved several minutes of hitting down, enter, down, enter... it made me think, can we expect to see general GUI features like being able to drag a box around multiple items, holding control to add items to a list on top of that, and so on?

I get the feeling that every screen and menu function in DF was scratch-coded from the bottom up every time a new feature was added to the game. Are you going back and replacing each unique menu with something more like a generic abstract interface now? Do you think this will make it easier to add new features in the future?

TrevorBOB9 asked about releases for other platforms. I remembered that Steam support for Linux is pretty good. Is the Steam release going to be Linux compatible? Have you thought about an android release- with the GUI improvements, this seems more reasonable.

I believe you've stated in the podcasts that you're not particularly enjoying UI work, is that true? What of it is the most rewarding aspect to you, and what's the least rewarding?

[PatrikLundell]

There's a huge difference between running mostly the same code with different OS bindings and running a completely different binary (compiled from the same High Level Assembly source code (a.k.a. C++, with or without the "++")) for a different CPU architecture (not to mention other HW related issues: how many Android thingies have mice and real keyboards?). This is in addition to the UI headache of trying to get the UI to work on minuscule screens, just as the crippling 80*25 restriction is finally broken.

[falcc]

Thanks everyone for helping with my last question.

Toady, do you have any loose plans for what the new adventure mode UI is going to be like, prior to the post-steam rewrites? For example:

1) Are you getting rid of the letter-based inventory?
2) Will interact with items, inventory, wear, drink/eat, etc stay in different menus or will there be all kinds of since-invented clicking interactions? If the latter what do you think you'll do with all those spare keyboard keys? 
3) Will there still be roughly the same number of button presses for directed combat since the easy mode of just arrow buttoning towards an enemy is already implemented?
4) Will there be any changes to conversation filtering?
5) Any chance of a little speech bubble next to a sprite when a creature is talking?

Thanks for the answers as always. I'm SO excited to get this game on a whole new platform.

[Mim]

Hello Toady!

On the Wiki, there are listed some physical equations behind penetration of layers and how that interacts with tissue damage and armor in combat; I have been told these are from DF2012. The relevant equations are under https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Weapon#Combat_formulae as:

1. M = Skill * Size * Str * Vel / (10^6 * (1 + i_Size/(w_density*w_size))
2. M >= (aSY/wSY + (A+1)*aSF/wSF) * (10 + 2*a_quality) / (Sha * w_quality)
3. 2 * w_size * wIY > A * a_density
4. M >= (2*aIF - aIY) * (2 + 0.4*a_quality) * A

Anyways, I am a physics nerd, and I would like to ask you what the true (and new) equations are and how they are used, so we can post them on the wiki and also marvel at your genius. We could use DFHack to figure it out instead of bugging you, but we might get the equations wrong (as, from what I can tell, at least one of the equations on the Wiki mixes units in rather horrifying ways).

Thank you,
Mîm the Petty-dwarf

[Bumber]

Can you describe where the data to populate the military equipment screen lists comes from? We can tell when the UI list is corrupted, but we need to know where the data is stored to potentially repair it with DFHack.

[Cruxador]

Regarding the UI in the new video, categorically, it looks great. Not sure the three types of food would be what I'd have put on the top bar but considering how much spare space there is, seems reasonable until the caravan arc comes to fuller fruition and other forms of wealth become available. What's the nature of the considerations for what types of resource are likely to be valuable to the player, and what resources or other elements have priority in the new UI? To what degree is it customizable, or (more likely) to what degree are possibilities of customizable UI being discussed? It would be cool if it were configurable so if, for example, you were working on a megaproject you could have stone (or even specific types of stone) on the bar.

Also, a minor question but what is the conceptual distinction between lower left, lower center, and lower right UI buttons? How might other things not yet represented be incorporated as UI work continues? Seems roughly like designations, various types of area that aren't designations, and then the escape menu and map? But that leaves a handful of things that you could get in one keypress that don't yet have a clickable button, notably everything to do with military (which I know is a much bigger topic).

Toady has earlier answered that the Character version of screens won't be considered in any detail until the principles have been worked out (if a widget turns out not to be that great, it's a waste to make a Character version of it as well). It's also been mentioned that key bindings will be thrown up in the air and reworked as part of the UI rework, so the particular key a function is bound to may very well change, but since key bindings are just that, displaying the key currently bound would reflect whatever the key is currently bound to. The optimistic interpretation is that key bindings won't be included in screens until the actual functionality has been decided upon, while the pessimistic one is that it will be put off until after the last minute, and won't make it in, as Toady's key support wordings have been less than reassuring.
All that's been said so far indicates that the key binding functionality would be identical between the Premium and the Classic version, so if one version requires a mouse equivalent the other one does as well (it can be noted that a key binding widget should work identically in Tile Set as well as Character mode, with only the tiles used for potential decoration of the widget differing).

He mentioned that the keyboard support will still be there in the latest video, which is positive, at least, and I believe it's been said before too. Just nothing about any enhancements or changes to it. Even if it's last minute, I don't think representing key bindings would be cut altogether since it's not really that hard to do, just takes implementing it in each place. But even in terms of layout issues, they're planning full tooltip support and would be pretty easy to just stick a little text call into the tooltip.

[voliol]

Instincly, I feel the stress meter should have the happier dwarves on the right, and the unhappy on the left. Perhaps because my mind keeps telling me it’s a ”happiness” meter which should have the higher (happier) values on the right, and the ”negative” unhappy values to the left? Or that left-to-right reading culture is heavily ingrained with the idea that you should go from left to right? I do not know.