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Author Topic: Future of the Fortress  (Read 3136908 times)

PatrikLundell

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #3825 on: February 04, 2021, 07:49:16 am »

Regarding the previously mentioned upcoming army update, will there be anything like joining another party rather than leading one yourself? It's a bit difficult to describe, but like, you could say enlist with an army for a time in adventure mode and your character will be dragged along the overlord in whatever direction the army goes, participating in battles and sieges and all that.
Doesn't look like something that's in the scope of an army improvement push.

Rather, it's adventure mode expansion into the rather difficult territory of limited player agency, such as e.g. being possessed, under a compulsion, or being imprisoned. In addition to that, the world armies would have to be made to act in a non abstract manner, at least when an adventurer is with them (not only the actual battles that adventurers may happen upon, but also planning, recon, sabotage, marching, training,...).
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AudiRgr8

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #3826 on: February 05, 2021, 02:50:28 pm »

Playing a new fort and 20 years in now and had some questions


Will animals that die from old age ever be butcherable / if not, will an animal trainer be able to notify you when they are nearing their natural lifespan?

Will swords and weapons be able to be encrusted with gems?

And lastly,

Will there ever be an option to migrate a fortress? As in taking some of your current dwarves, supplies and animals and building some wagons and starting a new fortress, either abandoning or retiring the other one?

This game has been a massive influence on my life for nearly a decade so wanted to say thank you to both Tarn and Zach for continuing to work on this masterwork.  :)



« Last Edit: February 05, 2021, 03:24:13 pm by AudiRgr8 »
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PatrikLundell

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #3827 on: February 05, 2021, 05:08:11 pm »

Animals dead from old age usually aren't considered particularly safe to eat, but tame animals that died to violence but can't be butchered is an issue that doesn't make real world sense and keeps popping up for new players. Using third party utilities (e.g. Dwarf Therapist) you can designate the oldest animals for slaughter, and you can approximate that in vanilla by designated the ones furthest up the list (won't quite work for locally tamed animals and animals arriving with migrants, though).

I seems to me that setting out anew with an experienced crew would be a strong candidate for a starting scenario, and so among the ones that may be considered when that arc is started.

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Hartsteen

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #3828 on: February 06, 2021, 04:22:29 am »

dirshouldectly

As a non-native speaker I really pondered about that for quite a time...  :D
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Bumber

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #3829 on: February 06, 2021, 11:55:38 am »

dirshouldectly

As a non-native speaker I really pondered about that for quite a time...  :D

Looks like "should" got accidentally dragged-and-dropped into "directly".

It's a verannoyingy  browser feature, IMO.
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THE xTROLL FUR SOCKx RUSE WAS A........... DISTACTION        the carp HAVE the wagon

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FrankVill

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #3830 on: February 07, 2021, 08:42:27 am »

Recently, I was thinking about automation in Fortress mode.
Just looking at the workshops, there are three possible situations:
1- you have to choose a task in a workshop to build an object (a bed).
2 - you have to synchronize some workshops with different raw materials / tasks to get an object (soap)
3 - in Fishery it is not necessary to order any tasks, if there is a fish, the dwarf fisherman will do the task alone.

I understand that if everything were automated the Fortress mode could become contemplative and possibly boring, but if you have to be attentive to every step or detail the experience could become tedious and overwhelming. For that reason it is important to strike a balance and I suppose this question will often be a headache when designing DF.

My question is:

- Looking into the distant future, what role will task automation play or how far do you hope it can go?
- If the player does not have to worry about certain routine things, what do you hope he can get his attention to during the game?
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Shonai_Dweller

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #3831 on: February 07, 2021, 04:59:23 pm »

Recently, I was thinking about automation in Fortress mode.
Just looking at the workshops, there are three possible situations:
1- you have to choose a task in a workshop to build an object (a bed).
2 - you have to synchronize some workshops with different raw materials / tasks to get an object (soap)
3 - in Fishery it is not necessary to order any tasks, if there is a fish, the dwarf fisherman will do the task alone.

I understand that if everything were automated the Fortress mode could become contemplative and possibly boring, but if you have to be attentive to every step or detail the experience could become tedious and overwhelming. For that reason it is important to strike a balance and I suppose this question will often be a headache when designing DF.

My question is:

- Looking into the distant future, what role will task automation play or how far do you hope it can go?
- If the player does not have to worry about certain routine things, what do you hope he can get his attention to during the game?

Don't forget that (no matter how much some people hate it because they're used to Dfhack versions) we have automation already:
4. You use the manager to simply order tasks to be carried out when resources are available and let the dwarves worry about what workshop to use (with fine tuning in workshop Profiles).
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Ariosto

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #3832 on: February 07, 2021, 08:42:57 pm »

Bit late to ask this but....

I'm wondering if there was ever a conceptual idea to establish some sort of volunteer based team whose aim was to track down and find solutions for the backlog of bugs that has built up over time. Now I realize that The Toady One doesn't necessarily need or want help, but I am seeing this from a less then direct angle. The plan would be for a group of volunteers who are familiar with at least parts of the game's code to try and pinpoint what is causing certain bugs, attempt to solve it, and then provide a report detailing what was changed and where in the code. Other volunteers, ideally the more experienced, would go over the report and try to determine if said solution is "safe" and would not cause errors elsewhere in the game, and should they feel confident in a solution they'd publish it. Toady himself could then choose whether or not to act on it, I definitely will not rule out cases where a found solution to a bug might cause problems in later versions and so may be found undesirable, but DF players would also have a choice to act on it.

Mind something like this could already exist in some form and I'm just not aware or failing to recognize them.
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Shonai_Dweller

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #3833 on: February 07, 2021, 10:59:05 pm »

Bit late to ask this but....

I'm wondering if there was ever a conceptual idea to establish some sort of volunteer based team whose aim was to track down and find solutions for the backlog of bugs that has built up over time. Now I realize that The Toady One doesn't necessarily need or want help, but I am seeing this from a less then direct angle. The plan would be for a group of volunteers who are familiar with at least parts of the game's code to try and pinpoint what is causing certain bugs, attempt to solve it, and then provide a report detailing what was changed and where in the code. Other volunteers, ideally the more experienced, would go over the report and try to determine if said solution is "safe" and would not cause errors elsewhere in the game, and should they feel confident in a solution they'd publish it. Toady himself could then choose whether or not to act on it, I definitely will not rule out cases where a found solution to a bug might cause problems in later versions and so may be found undesirable, but DF players would also have a choice to act on it.

Mind something like this could already exist in some form and I'm just not aware or failing to recognize them.

The code isn't open, so no.

Bug tracker is run by volunteers, some of whom can hack their way in with Dfhack, etc to suggest solutions. But only Toady has the code.
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PatrikLundell

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #3834 on: February 08, 2021, 04:08:42 am »

Adding to Shonai_Dweller's response: While the source code isn't available, people investigating bugs can identify the cause with an impressive accuracy at times. The werecreature birth bug fixed in the latest release is an example of that. Finding the cause of a problem is often the most time consuming part of fixing bugs.
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ror6ax

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #3835 on: February 08, 2021, 05:54:57 am »

Inspired by Ariosto's question - has an idea of test suite been raised?
What I mean here is external piece of code that runs some scenarios and compares if their output is as expected.
That would eliminate the need to extensively play-test all new versions of the game to validate every single action.
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Shonai_Dweller

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #3836 on: February 08, 2021, 07:40:24 am »

Inspired by Ariosto's question - has an idea of test suite been raised?
What I mean here is external piece of code that runs some scenarios and compares if their output is as expected.
That would eliminate the need to extensively play-test all new versions of the game to validate every single action.

Toady has debugging tools he's mentioned.
Would spending the time to develop himself a test suite be of some benefit compared to the tests he already carries out?
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Ariosto

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #3837 on: February 09, 2021, 01:45:07 pm »

The code isn't open, so no.

Bug tracker is run by volunteers, some of whom can hack their way in with Dfhack, etc to suggest solutions. But only Toady has the code.
Adding to Shonai_Dweller's response: While the source code isn't available, people investigating bugs can identify the cause with an impressive accuracy at times. The werecreature birth bug fixed in the latest release is an example of that. Finding the cause of a problem is often the most time consuming part of fixing bugs.
I'm not surprised, even if I have to admit that I was thinking in terms of the game code available (i.e. the downloaded files) rather than the game code proper. I wasn't aware that the Bug Tracker was run by volunteers though, but I suppose I never gave it a hard glance in the past beyond seeing if certain bugs were logged or solved.

Toady has debugging tools he's mentioned.
Would spending the time to develop himself a test suite be of some benefit compared to the tests he already carries out?
It would be dependent on the amount of time it would take to set up and whether it could be done in a manner that would satisfy Toady's privacy when it came to the DF code, but it would provide an extensive supply of manhours and computing power with which he could use to order tests. The caveat of course as you note is the amount of time it would take to set up the test suite, and honestly I'm not sure how long it would take; in the long-term it would always pay back, but the short-term cost I can't gauge.
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FrankVill

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #3838 on: February 10, 2021, 01:02:18 pm »

Recently, I was thinking about automation in Fortress mode.
Just looking at the workshops, there are three possible situations:
1- you have to choose a task in a workshop to build an object (a bed).
2 - you have to synchronize some workshops with different raw materials / tasks to get an object (soap)
3 - in Fishery it is not necessary to order any tasks, if there is a fish, the dwarf fisherman will do the task alone.

I understand that if everything were automated the Fortress mode could become contemplative and possibly boring, but if you have to be attentive to every step or detail the experience could become tedious and overwhelming. For that reason it is important to strike a balance and I suppose this question will often be a headache when designing DF.

My question is:

- Looking into the distant future, what role will task automation play or how far do you hope it can go?
- If the player does not have to worry about certain routine things, what do you hope he can get his attention to during the game?

Don't forget that (no matter how much some people hate it because they're used to Dfhack versions) we have automation already:
4. You use the manager to simply order tasks to be carried out when resources are available and let the dwarves worry about what workshop to use (with fine tuning in workshop Profiles).

Yes, you're right  :)

In fact, I enjoy using it. Although it is necessary to have some experience and a little knowledge in this game beforehand for that. When I started playing I was scared of the manager's menu, I only started playing with him two years later.

I asked my question because some workshops caught my attention (tanner's shop or fishery) because in those cases dwarfs don't need to receive any task from me or the manager.
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BlueManedHawk

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Re: Future of the Fortress
« Reply #3839 on: February 11, 2021, 03:57:46 pm »

Is "bogeymen" pronounced /bʊ.gi,mɛn/ or /bəu.gi.mɛn/?
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