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[PatrikLundell]

Tents already pop up in refugee camps, will the reworked sieges make use of them as well?
Likewise, will a sieging army make use of artillery as we know it, or will artillery be reworked?

I like to imagine sieging armies set up camps and patrols, raiding your surrounding settlements to coax you out, and for artillery fire to follow an arc, followed by area-of-effect/structure damage.
:

I wouldn't expect improved sieges to introduce improved siege weapons, as those are very strong candidates for rework during boats/movable equipment/traps work, and so would be scrapped and reworked at that time.

I don't see how attacks on holdings you can't really interact with (or defend) by auxiliary armies to the one besieging you would be affected by you breaking the siege (and while you're under siege you probably won't get any reports about it either, because of the siege blocking info from reaching the fortress). In order for such attacks to be meaningful for a fortress you'd need means to intercept such armies and send armies to defend settlements that you somehow got spy/scout reports about being targeted (although I don't see how you'd be able to get there before the enemy: your troops would probably just about be able to partially leave the embark during the time it takes the enemy to march from their staging point to the target).

Why would enemies that don't eat or sleep use camps, and what would patrols achieve? Patrols would have a purpose if the sieger doesn't know things instantly, i.e. if scouts/patrols would have to report the opening/closing of avenues of entries, defender patrols being sent out, etc. to their on scene command and it would then send orders back to react to what's reported. That would make the whole affair very sluggish.

Is the area rework contemplating or serving as a base for the planned workshop rework into areas?

At the very least I'd expect it to serve as tests of some principles that may be of use. Lessons learned might then be applied both to workshops and the zones implemented now (and the ones existing in the current version).

[kontako]

I wouldn't expect improved sieges to introduce improved siege weapons, as those are very strong candidates for rework during boats/movable equipment/traps work, and so would be scrapped and reworked at that time.

I thought much the same, though I wasn't sure how else 'improved' sieges would work in the next release, other than invaders just digging through everything.

Why would enemies that don't eat or sleep use camps, and what would patrols achieve? Patrols would have a purpose if the sieger doesn't know things instantly, i.e. if scouts/patrols would have to report the opening/closing of avenues of entries, defender patrols being sent out, etc. to their on scene command and it would then send orders back to react to what's reported. That would make the whole affair very sluggish.

Currently they just stand out in the fields, for months at a time, braving the wind, rain and snow... It seems much stranger to me than forming camps.
Why? It serves as a fortified position to organise the siege, collect and store resources to construct siege weapons, and serves as a counter-objective for the player to attack with their own siege weapons and defences.
I like to imagine goblins shouting at eachother around a table prior to every assault, or the lone necromancer menacingly watching from afar on a throne in the only tent.

Sieges are supposed take a long time, in that case I don't see sluggish as bad.

[A_Curious_Cat]

I wouldn't expect improved sieges to introduce improved siege weapons, as those are very strong candidates for rework during boats/movable equipment/traps work, and so would be scrapped and reworked at that time.

I thought much the same, though I wasn't sure how else 'improved' sieges would work in the next release, other than invaders just digging through everything.

Why would enemies that don't eat or sleep use camps, and what would patrols achieve? Patrols would have a purpose if the sieger doesn't know things instantly, i.e. if scouts/patrols would have to report the opening/closing of avenues of entries, defender patrols being sent out, etc. to their on scene command and it would then send orders back to react to what's reported. That would make the whole affair very sluggish.

Currently they just stand out in the fields, for months at a time, braving the wind, rain and snow... It seems much stranger to me than forming camps.
Why? It serves as a fortified position to organise the siege, collect and store resources to construct siege weapons, and serves as a counter-objective for the player to attack with their own siege weapons and defences.
I like to imagine goblins shouting at eachother around a table prior to every assault, or the lone necromancer menacingly watching from afar on a throne in the only tent.

Sieges are supposed take a long time, in that case I don't see sluggish as bad.

The longest siege in history was the Siege of Ceuta which lasted from 1694-1727.  That’s 33 years!

[PatrikLundell]

Well, currently sieges last for one season or one year, unless broken before that (with some odd exceptions that are probably bugs).

As it currently stands, I send attackers to one entrance until the traps are filled (or, if I'd used militia, the kill zone was sufficiently populated), block that entrance, and open another, while "processing" the first one. However, if observations had to be made and reported, the closing of the first entrance wouldn't stop enemies rushing for it until after a couple of days, and similarly, it would take additional time before scouts would report the second entrance being open and enemies starting to move towards it. It already takes a couple of days for enemies to cross the embark to attack from the other side, and adding additional time to that just makes things more boring, possibly to the point where I'd just take out a first wave to get some goblinite, but then just wait it out if it doesn't seem possible to wear them down before they give up and leave anyway (it's a bit tricky to try to juggle the current mega project while also dealing with a siege: the siege typically tends to demand the full attention both of me and of the dorfs [all hands on deck]).

Current siege weapons are essentially useless for trying to hit a random target on the embark, given the restrictions currently in place, so a camp wouldn't really make a viable target.

If you could control squads I could definitely see them being useful if the enemy was under a fog of war restriction so you could raid the enemy (that typically outnumber your forces significantly), but on the other hand it would be odd if you had a complete overview of the map and the enemy didn't.

I guess we'll see more about where Improved Sieges will head when Toady starts to work on it.

[Toady One]

(re: bay12games.com / dev log / bug tracker / dffd link outage, the hosting company is experiencing problems broadly, so hopefully we'll come back up when they sort all that out)

[LordBaal]

Thanks for keeping us posted Toady.

[squamous]

3. A lot of demon stuff seems to be tied to the existence of procedurally generated demons (ie custom demons won't spawn unless they're enabled etc). Are there any tags or adv worldgen edits I could make to negate this?

3. For the spire-creating demons, looking at how it works, having UNIQUE_DEMON and CAN_LEARN/INTELLIGENT on them should put them in the candidate pool, without them needing to be procedural and even with the proc demons set to zero, but you can't turn off the spire process for generated/raw creatures with those tags (UNIQUE_DEMON is overloaded in that sense.)  I may be misunderstanding the question.  Do the custom spire demons not appear in world gen if proc demons are turned off (Bottom Layer needs to be turned on, since the spire connects)?  Or do you mean after digging?

1. Should probably have clarified there, I did mean that I was having trouble making custom demons spawn in the world at all when setting procgen demons to 0 and thought it might just be some raw stuff I got wrong but I guess it might be a bug instead.

unrelatedly
2. What sort of activities will adventurers be able to do in the military update? I assume commanding armies, but how will that work? Will site leaders give us troops and tell us to go and attack a certain spot or something?
3. In the far future do you think it would be possible to have self-propelled siege engines, or mod them in? Like landships or something.
4. What does UNDEAD_CANDIDATE (the entity token) do? The wiki entry seems unsure.
5. What factors cause a dirt road to evolve into a higher-tier road in worldgen?

[SheerSharkAttack]

when can we expect more procedurally generated culture like what we have for music, particularly art styles for images and patterns for decorations?

[Shonai_Dweller]

when can we expect more procedurally generated culture like what we have for music, particularly art styles for images and patterns for decorations?

Next big arc after Mythgen releases, "Starting Scenarios", is due to take on society, culture and politics in detail.

Doesn't mean something won't come up sooner, but that's the general timeline.

[kontako]

Well, currently sieges last for one season or one year, unless broken before that (with some odd exceptions that are probably bugs).

As it currently stands, I send attackers to one entrance until the traps are filled (or, if I'd used militia, the kill zone was sufficiently populated), block that entrance, and open another, while "processing" the first one. However, if observations had to be made and reported, the closing of the first entrance wouldn't stop enemies rushing for it until after a couple of days, and similarly, it would take additional time before scouts would report the second entrance being open and enemies starting to move towards it. It already takes a couple of days for enemies to cross the embark to attack from the other side, and adding additional time to that just makes things more boring, possibly to the point where I'd just take out a first wave to get some goblinite, but then just wait it out if it doesn't seem possible to wear them down before they give up and leave anyway (it's a bit tricky to try to juggle the current mega project while also dealing with a siege: the siege typically tends to demand the full attention both of me and of the dorfs [all hands on deck]).

Current siege weapons are essentially useless for trying to hit a random target on the embark, given the restrictions currently in place, so a camp wouldn't really make a viable target.

If you could control squads I could definitely see them being useful if the enemy was under a fog of war restriction so you could raid the enemy (that typically outnumber your forces significantly), but on the other hand it would be odd if you had a complete overview of the map and the enemy didn't.

I guess we'll see more about where Improved Sieges will head when Toady starts to work on it.

Those are fair points about the limits of the timescale and line of sight. I imagine it could be avoided if sieging armies just assumed they'd need to prepare some sort of breach weapon, and attack and fallback in waves where necessary.

I reckoned that with the mention of some attention to sieges we may hear about some quick changes to current siege weapons (such as projectiles following a parabola through the z-axis, and causing area-of-effect damage on impact to enable breaches), and thought the camps offered a cool counter objective.
Now that I think about it, it might not be worth it for Toady to spend time there if he intends to address it again at a later date.

I did a brief search, though I may have missed it:
Has anything been revealed on how the manager page will be reworked?

[Urist McSadist]

In the magic update are there going to be procedural workshops or something similar, for doing magical stuff, like creating golems?

[Beag]

Given the new graphical requirements for creatures due to the steam release do you foresee the myth and magic update taking slightly longer due to needing to be able to graphically represent large quantities of randomly generated creatures?

[Toady One]

Will there ever be different reactions to certain events and things based on personality quirks? for example most dwarves are horrified by ghosts but some might be fascinated/excited by them and react accordingly or dwarves having phobias of things such as types of vermin

Shonai_Dweller: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8254316#msg8254316
PatrikLundell: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8254529#msg8254529
FantasticDorf: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8254539#msg8254539
DogsRNice (op): http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8254869#msg8254869
Shonai_Dweller: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8255334#msg8255334

As people pointed out, there are many things in there already, through e.g. the needs (determined mostly by personality differences) which control several behaviors, and the emotional reactions.  It isn't very satisfying though in lots of places, I agree.  Stuff like getting out of jail has something like 20 different emotional reactions possible, both positive and negative, with more nuance beyond that, but it doesn't lead to specific action - which is of course a lot of extra implementation time.  So it's just the kind of thing that'll slowly continue to grow.

1. Would feather tree wood be light enough to only bruise as a blunt weapon?
2. How is impact damage currently calculated for blunt weapons, especially in regards to armor penetration(which is quite high for blunt if I remember correctly)?
3. Have you considered having (higher tier?) tools made of more than one material, like a wooden axe handle + leather grip + metal head, possibly even customizable?
4. Is there a plan for varying wood value?

1/3/4. PatrikLundell: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8254659#msg8254659

Don't have much to add here - we wanted to do multimaterial items certainly, but that adds a rewrite burden throughout the entire project (unless it's just decorations, which are more cosmetic and not ideal for doing actual mechanical changes), so it's tricky to get it started.

2. One of the big things is the deflection roll, which comes from the armor use skill and the craft quality, and the squareness of the strike.  If deflect's really high it can change effective yield by two times when it decides how to compare it to the momentum.  Overall though, the yield properties on the impact don't affect the momentum very much - it takes off some percentage of the lowest yield value, and that's all physics-free since we don't have nearly enough information about shape/etc. to figure out what would actually happen.  Yield/deflect are essentially some form of "dam reduction" at that point.

Will army formations be in the game? Will it be like or use dancing? Is alchemy coming back?

PatrikLundell: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8254792#msg8254792

We'll probably see some form of army formations with the military stuff that comes after Steam but before myth/magic.  That might not include local squad formations, or it may if it flops out of army formations.  There's a lot of room/directions there and we won't get to everything.  I don't know that local formations'll involve the 'activity event' code like dancing, but the way there are designated squares for each individual certainly seems like some part of the proper method.

As PatrikLundell replies, alchemy is all just a lump with magic stuff, in that sense.  For the regular chem stuff, it just comes in with industries very very slowly.  I'm not sure when/if we'll get to proper chemistry.  There are lots of specifics, and it seems too difficult to hit a satisfying number of the combinations even with the crap we currently have lying around.  When we did the knowledge bits for the libraries, we considered various stuff we could add, but I'm not personally qualified to handle the "what if you put quicklime and oil of vitriol together?" questions.  Like, if it just makes particular salts as usual/etc., or something weird happens because of the exact elements/molecules (as I imagine is often the case), for all the possibilities and third compounds you can throw in there, and heat, and whatever else.  That sort of thing.  Ultimately I think that'd be fun through, especially with industry links etc.

Will statues in the graphics release have a backup placeholder appearance, or does their content being shown visually mean the "statue of a ." bug will be getting more serious investigation prior to release?

Shonai_Dweller: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8255331#msg8255331

I think it makes the issue a little worse, yeah.  But they'll also have an appearance when it screws up (right now they do, but it's just an empty pedestal, which is appropriate enough.)

1. How do pebbles as terrain work?

2. Is there a way planned to reduce boulders to pebbly terrain, or was that just speculating about what you would need to do if there was a realistic amount of stone?

3. Are there any plans to introduce throwing combat into fortress mode or would our military love throwing their clothes too much for it to be sustainable?

4. Is there any chance of brave civilians tossing pebbles at an invading force, or a hated noble?

1/2: PatrikLundell: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8255708#msg8255708

3/4: I don't have any particular plans here.  There are several better ways the civilians could react to certain situations, certainly, but I'm not sure it'll be worth the fuss any time soon.  Having them throw stones from the ground which disappear afterward is a lot easier than managing a new set of military equipment anyway.  The military equipment will have to get more versatile eventually, but I don't think I'll have to manage that for the military changes before magic, and it would be a lot of work.

Do you anticipate potential problems where a mechanic could be easily implemented and rendered in the graphical version of dwarf fortress, but would be difficult to convey in the classic version? An example of this might be narrow barriers that are placed and drawn on the borders between tiles, rather than in the tiles themselves. Partitions for rooms, or fences for pastures, etc.

The graphical version opens a lot of possibilities up for DF, and I worry that the classical version might hold some of those back. Do you have thoughts about balancing potential new mechanics vs. backwards compatibility?

Since we've been doing grid-based stuff for so long, I don't expect we'll be rushing off in these directions.  There's so much to do that doesn't require fundamental changes.

On the other hand, there are certainly already conveniences that have cropped up, like being able to label stockpiles in the map area and so forth, that only happen currently in the graphical version, partially up above the stockpile tiles.

The classic version certainly stops us from doing certain things.  I'm not sure what the border cases look like yet, or which cases are the most tempting.  It is dangerous to get into territory where things are implemented one way in one version, and one way in another, say, when it comes to stuff like the fences you mentioned.

With the new bedroom zones discussed in the March 8th DevLog, will we still be in a situation of having to draw hundreds of individual bedrooms? I can imagine a situation where the game knows to flood fill out from individual rooms defined by doors and walls, or perhaps beds, within the zone,  treating them as individual bedrooms but vastly simplifying player layout.

"So, does this mean we can actually make multi z-level tall bed/throne rooms (if their assignment works the same way as with other zones)?" --From /u/bbkilmister on reddit, excellent question!

March 8th: "Furniture based rooms are not going to survive"
March 19th: "...it uses a flood routine from each potential piece of furniture"

So, which is it? Are bedrooms linked to beds now or not? Can we make a bedroom without a bed by just drawing a zone and calling it a bedroom? And can flood fill designate a hundred enclosed rooms as "bedrooms" if they don't contain beds? Or will that just not work?

Also does flood-fill automatically know what kind of room I want based on it's furniture? Or do we have to choose "bedroom--flood fill", then "office-flood-fill", etc. So if I have 10 bedrooms and a manager's office (with furniture) can I drag a zone and it'll know to make an office from the chair and bedrooms from the beds.

And if it is automatic, what if I have a room with a table, a chair and a statue, will it know this is a pleasant dining room or might it be confused and call it a statue garden or an office?

PatrikLundell: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8261443#msg8261443
Shonai_Dweller: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8261447#msg8261447

I guess we already handled the first question with the dev log that came later.  You can create multiple rooms now.

Specifically, you can use both methods - you can paint an individual bedroom without a bed at all.  However, when you are using the multizone tool (which is the default currently), the game needs to understand what you are doing.  It uses beds to do that.  Theoretically we could try to just detect any enclosed area and turn them all into bedrooms, but there are enough weird cases there, I think that using beds is just safer and covers the main case (and you have the individual painter for the rest.)  It does not try to autodetect because there are too many ambiguous cases (especially between offices and dining halls), so you select your type first.  "Bedroom", "Office", etc.  If your zone type is one of the multizone compatible types (currently: bedroom, office, dining hall, tomb), you are in multizone mode, otherwise you start off painting.  That's probably a bit confusing - we have some onscreen instructions at least.

Will the workshops get the same treatment as rooms now or later? So instead of putting down a 3x3 'forge' you put down an anvil and whatever else it wants, letting you customize rooms much more while building.

Do you intend the new room designating to trial the 'decentralised' workshop system you once spoke of, in which the function of a zone is determined by the tools/furnature present?

I'm not sure if it's been asked yet, but are we likely to see workshops zonified in the same way bedrooms and the like are? Will it require creating certain tools instead of making most workshops out of just one material? I'm thinking of the way forges and dye workshops are built, requiring an anvil or barrel.

Is the area rework contemplating or serving as a base for the planned workshop rework into areas?

Shonai_Dweller: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8257609#msg8257609
PatrikLundell: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8257615#msg8257615
Lysabild (op): http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8257622#msg8257622
Shonai_Dweller: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8257623#msg8257623
PatrikLundell: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8260522#msg8260522

PatrikLundell's replies go into several specific concerns with how it's implemented, but broadly speaking, getting the zones and activities/'ownership' of dwarves more sync'd up and less involved with particular furniture items was a step in that direction we were making, yeah.  But it's not going to happen before the Steam release.

We're already running into those issues, incidentally, with the idea of 'zoo' 'sculpture garden' 'memorial hall' 'meeting hall', which all fit under meeting area now but get a small shoutout based on the furniture you have placed in the room.  Whether you should be able to have specific activities or some way to more directly assert a type without worrying about furniture percentages is open.  Right now it doesn't make a difference so it's just some extra wording.

With the new way that rooms are designated, will it still be possible to have overlapping room designations - such as a shared office / dining room?

You can make two zones with the same shape - we had to remove multitype single zones for a variety of underlying code reasons, though we should still be able to overcome that and make single multifunctional living rooms for individuals, and other multiuse zones in the future as needed.  We haven't reassessed sharing penalties yet, but having the whole thing happen under zones now should make that a little easier.

With barracks and archery ranges being within the room zone changes (barracks not explicitly said), will the function of armor and weapon stands as a place for storage be planned to be somewhat salvaged or rebuilt from the ground up?

Fingers crossed for stashing away stuff in bedrooms and armories, with less juggling of item ownership of having it loose in a pile or stack of bins.

PatrikLundell: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8257721#msg8257721

We have a decorative rack/stand setup as the default now.  If the storage code can't be cleaned up, that's how it'll release as well.  I'm not sure if we'll be able to tackle that or not.

Where would a dwarf who's made a particular attachment to a object or a preference (oft a slayer artifact with its own rules) want to store their objects out of duty?

I'm not sure where this is at currently.  I presume you mean when they are out of uniform?  I'm not actually sure if they just throw it in a stockpile or what.  Haven't tried to handle rack/stand code yet.

Regarding 'Bedroom Zones' in the March 8 update; Could this mechanic theoretically be applied to critters?  Specifically, a 'Nest Box Zone' for the purpose of allowing underwater nest boxes to work, so we can finally breed the mythical Sea Serpent.

FantasticDorf: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8257788#msg8257788
PatrikLundell: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8257918#msg8257918

Yeah, have to agree with the reply that this isn't really zone related, since the aboveground ones don't use zones anyway.  Is this like flier pathing not working right?  I imagine the nest boxes get zeroed-out pathwise when you flood the area where you placed them (assume that's how you'd try to do it.)  Those problems are all difficult to solve.  But yeah, at least a zone would localize the problem so the CPU doesn't totally die.  The animals would still need to get to the zone though.  At least that's a little easier with water than something like a pillar w/ eyrie for fliers, but it's a similar pathing problem over long distances, where we don't have component information and so can't initiate the path without potentially flood-filling the entire map (except the part they want, if it's blocked off, which they can't tell in advance.)

Regarding kobolds and certain of their currently bizarre impulses - bizarre for a "context-based sublanguage",that is, to give a summary:

According to legends mode, kobolds may construct a market and a dungeon in their cave. As there is no evidence of any structures resembling such in kobold caves, they are probably either an error or serve an unknown purpose during world generation.

...which do you think it is? Thanks, anyway.

Urlance Woolsbane: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8258379#msg8258379

Yeah, Urlance is correct there - we just haven't supported everything on the monster maps.  I think the code cuts them off from libraries?  I hope so...  there's a further complication that the 'market' flag is overloaded now to signify important sites.  I'm not sure what motivated them to build a dungeon though, ha ha.

Do you think we could expand further on the government and site control mechanics? I know DF is more of a world simulation than a strategy game and that we already have stuff like holdings, tribute and occupying sites mechanics, but after playing Crusader Kings for a while it seems there's a lot of mechanics that could be implemented to further flesh out both Adventure and Fortress gameplay:

<various government ideas>

Silverwing235: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8258972#msg8258972
PatrikLundell: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8258986#msg8258986

Yeah, I'm not able to reply to larger lists that belong over in the suggestions area, but generally, yeah, that's probably the main point of the release cycle after myth/magic, allowing alternative forms of societal organization.  That won't get us everything of course, since some of your list items relied on e.g. the economy or boats working as well (and these come right after in the current release order - as far as we've laid them out it goes villains/military/steamcleanup -> myth/magic -> entity/law/etc. rewrite/embark setup -> then the boats and economic stuff in some order.)

I'm impressed by how customisable the graphics are going to be. Are you thinking of trying something similar for the music? While vanilla may only have seasonal and maybe "siege" music, for modders being able to assign a unique soundtrack for each invading force/megabeast attack would be great.

Also, are you planning sound effects for Steam release too?

Yeah, it'll probably end up at least being a little more flexible that what vanilla actually provides media for.  There are so many ways to cut it though I don't want to promise any particular direction yet.

We have 10 'stingers' prepared currently, for important events (megabeasts, siege, ambush, marriages, births, strange mood, artifact created, cavern found, endgame stuff.)  That's pretty sparse and might be a little weird - our current plan is to test that out and see if there's some reasonable expansion that can/should be done for the first release in a consistent way we can manage and grow from.  I'm not sure if that'll include any workshop/river/etc. ambience, etc.

With the zone style rooms, will we now be able to assign multiple individuals to a single room (as some other zone designations allow) or will it remain as it currently is with either just a single owner or else no particular owner?

PatrikLundell: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8259462#msg8259462
Shonai_Dweller: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8259467#msg8259467
PatrikLundell: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8259495#msg8259495

You mean other zone designation like pastures?  The cage rooms also work that way, without being zones -- sadly, it's more a distinction of animals rather than the ownership code, so it isn't so easy to apply to the bedroom-style situations.  Regarding the replies, hopefully the friendship etc. rates have increased somewhat with the patchup release earlier this year.  That 'longterm acquaintance' issue really was blocking almost everything before it even had a chance.  But there could certainly still be issues.

Can we expect the undead and non-biological monsters (eg titans made of stone) after the Myth&Magic release to have greater complexity of their "mechanics" on par with living things? What I mean by this is living things currently have blood amounts, pain, fear, muscles, ligaments, guts etc. all effecting combat and abilities while animated dead and non-biological monsters have none of that and are relatively simplified mechanics-wise. I suppose after myth&magic there will be some kind of functional magic that stands in for functional blood and muscles, like "pulling 5% of the aura from the nearest piece of underworld slade" or whatever?

PatrikLundell: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8260765#msg8260765
alan8325 (op): http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8260903#msg8260903
MrWiggles: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8260999#msg8260999

Looking at the replies, I mean, I definitely hope there'll be a little bit of something here even early on.  Why things work the way they do, how they came about, what practical use they may have, side effects, how resilient they are when this or that happens, and whatever else; we want that for everything, and hopefully we'll get it for a few things on the first try.  After a lot of work on tissues and things, our real world critters do have quite an advantage starting out, in terms of complexity, and that has the advantage of not requiring as much tutorialization/exposition.  For magical systems, of course, part of the charm is not having to explain every little thing that the game might understand about them, without dedicated study etc., but it remains to be seen, as part of a game, how satisfying that really is.  Like, if a golem is 'bleeding to death' because you've severed its connection to some cosmic energy force, it could either throw jargon at you or vaguely describe what's going on - both of these have their problems.  You shouldn't know the jargon if you don't understand it in-character (and this is true of all the organ/ligament stuff as well), but a vague reaction is more prone to ambiguity/frustration.  I lean toward the latter but it won't be easy to stick the landing I think.

Archery range updates sound excellent! Can these ranges be set over multiple z-levels, or was your wooden platform at the same level as the distant cliff targets?

Related (kind-of) to flood-fill assigning of tombs, has something been added for regular coffins too? Enabling every one of those for burial (or, most likely forgetting to until miasma is filling up your tavern) is kind of annoying.

Flood-fill bedrooms - if we're setting a bunch of bedrooms for the tavern, will we still have to go back to set the location one at a time, or can this also be mass-selected?

Always the same z level!  Any fundamental change to the 'building' concept is going to have to wait until the map rewrite.  When we roll around to squad orders reworks (prior the first steam release), we might end up with some stuff that lets your ranged dwarves be more effective over Z levels, however (without them bashing people with their crossbows when empty.)

I was considering adding a 'catacomb' style zone that works like a dormitory for the dead.  Have to tweak coffin 'ownership' a bit to make it work.  (I don't remember if it technically counts as catacombs if the bodies aren't in the open rather than enclosed in individual caskets.  We'd still be using individual caskets here, just no doors.)

We haven't done the mass location setter yet, but right after you do the rectangle, it says something like "5 bedrooms created."  And then you have the option to "Done" or "Undo".  We were thinking of doing option setting abilities there to avoid the one-by-one problem.  Haven't done it yet!

Tents already pop up in refugee camps, will the reworked sieges make use of them as well?
Likewise, will a sieging army make use of artillery as we know it, or will artillery be reworked?

I like to imagine sieging armies set up camps and patrols, raiding your surrounding settlements to coax you out, and for artillery fire to follow an arc, followed by area-of-effect/structure damage.

Unrelated to above, can all historical events which occur in world generation also occur in the world (whether on or off-screen) during fortress mode?

PatrikLundell: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8262204#msg8262204
kontako (op): http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8262327#msg8262327
A_Curious_Cat: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8262357#msg8262357
PatrikLundell: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8262403#msg8262403
kontako (op): http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8264393#msg8264393

Tents are such a strange outlier right now, just sort of slowly filling the world as armies and refugees camp, I'm not sure how that's going to be formalized.  It would be cool if they camped out on the map.  We did have a few ideas of them messing with in various ways that involved building rather than just digging.

But really changing siege weapons is a bit far, as explored in the replies there, with the larger change kind of looming.  That doesn't mean they won't be touched though.  Certain easy changes might be worth it, especially if they actually add to the challenge.  If people are just lobbing rocks at a mountain it might not be worth it, although even that is potentially amusing.

It is too bad about the loaded area being so tight, and the strict boundary between loaded and unloaded unit combats -- one of the things also potentially addressed by the map rewrite since additional surface cameras aren't all that expensive if the pathfinding is kept to squad rather than work activities out on dynamically loaded perimeters.  There will be a bit of tension here with the first military release in terms of stuff that's better served later, and stuff that works in two stages.  Hopefully we can find two stage solutions for a lot of things that don't waste much time at all.

Regarding historical events, no not at all!  The world activation pushes are related to this.  We're missing most megabeast/troll stuff, lots of religious stuff, god/demon stuff (though we finally got some curses in), the villains stuff we delayed, all of the stuff relating to guilds/mercs that grew out of that as well, and there's the non-historical worldgen industries that also perform on a weekly schedule all through worldgen, and I'm sure a lot more besides.  We're slowly trying to draw them into parity.  Hopefully it isn't just getting worse.  It's so much easier to add to w.g., of course.  Part of the flexibility given by the map rewrite is to try to allow as prehistorical as possible events to happen, since we'll be getting more of that, and then hopefully we can continue to carry through.  In the ideal world, our w.g. -> off-screen -> adv mode -> dwf mode process (within one release) would pan out, but in practice it's very hard; it might have worked with the villains stuff, but the steam stuff became unavoidable.

What sort of activities will adventurers be able to do in the military update? I assume commanding armies, but how will that work? Will site leaders give us troops and tell us to go and attack a certain spot or something?
In the far future do you think it would be possible to have self-propelled siege engines, or mod them in? Like landships or something.
What does UNDEAD_CANDIDATE (the entity token) do? The wiki entry seems unsure.
What factors cause a dirt road to evolve into a higher-tier road in worldgen?

Ha ha, command'll have to work something like that, yeah.  We don't have equipment laying around anywhere yet, so we'll either need that or we'll need to pop everything to travel mode to do any kind of actual mustering.  The 'army improvements' section mentions one of the big things we were aiming at generally, which is having lines and multiple groups and so forth, in some fashion (our numbers are a bit small usually), and we'll have the companion/villain type command structures available to let you order subordinates and some subgroup of your army.  It's not at all settled though.  It's also hard to say where we're going to take the sieges of non-dwarven sites, since it has uncomfortable intersections with map changes we can't tackle fully yet.

Self-propelled engines: Moving fortress sections + boats kind of covers this yeah - siege towers, that sort of thing.  Actually self-propulsion is a different matter, though our machines are so broken with perpeptual motion etc. that I'm sure it'll be doable.

UNDEAD_CANDIDATE: Let's see...  47.05 does nothing...  44.12 does nothing...  40.24 does nothing...  34.11 does nothing...  so that's a pretty old tag, ha ha.  My only guess is that it relates to those outdoor pyramids with the zombies on them (it's only on the human civ, which made me think of those, don't remember if those were gone by 34.11 though)?  Maybe even the zombies that came after the wizard, where you had to send off a dwarf to avert the invasion, which wasn't even in a release as I recall?  But yeah, nothing now!

Road evolution: looks like connecting 2+ cities of population 1000+ that are within a few market links of each other.

when can we expect more procedurally generated culture like what we have for music, particularly art styles for images and patterns for decorations?

Shonai_Dweller: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8264196#msg8264196

Yeah, Shonai_Dweller gave one of the first major places where something might slip in there.  We aren't sure when we're doing anything more with the visual arts, from engraving to painting to architecture.  On the other hand, sculptures and engravings have been somewhat procedural long before the music/poetry/dance existed, through the specific images, but we do need some broader structure like we have with the newer stuff.

Has anything been revealed on how the manager page will be reworked?

Nope!  It's coming sooner than it was before though, ha ha.  All the labor stuff too, and whatever happens with workshop profiles.  Those'll be done together I think, and aside from leaning toward more automated AI as a default, I'm not sure what we'll get.  I need to finish up farms, the trade depot/trade, and the lever stuff first.

In the magic update are there going to be procedural workshops or something similar, for doing magical stuff, like creating golems?

It's in the cards.  New procedural industries and resources generally, and magical creatures.  But as usual, we have no idea what's in and what's out for the first pass.

Given the new graphical requirements for creatures due to the steam release do you foresee the myth and magic update taking slightly longer due to needing to be able to graphically represent large quantities of randomly generated creatures?

Not necessarily - so far, the artists have been able to work on things while I work on things.  We have to organize, but there's also a lot of room for parallel effort.  The better we organize, the more parallel it can be.  I'm also new at this part, ha ha.  So I'm sure I'll introduce some inefficiencies into the process.  But it will be okay.  And even before the myth/magic stuff, we have to tackle forgotten beasts/experiments/etc., so we'll have some practice.

[clinodev]

Thanks as always for the answers!

I'll go ahead and throw the one you missed about z-levels back in the mix:

"So, does this mean we can actually make multi z-level tall bed/throne rooms (if their assignment works the same way as with other zones)?"

--From /u/bbkilmister on reddit, excellent question!

[PatrikLundell]

Thanks as always for the answers!

I'll go ahead and throw the one you missed about z-levels back in the mix:

"So, does this mean we can actually make multi z-level tall bed/throne rooms (if their assignment works the same way as with other zones)?"

--From /u/bbkilmister on reddit, excellent question!

The question was answered, although that particular variation of the question wasn't quoted:
":
Quote from: Shonai_Dweller

    Archery range updates sound excellent! Can these ranges be set over multiple z-levels, or was your wooden platform at the same level as the distant cliff targets?

    Related (kind-of) to flood-fill assigning of tombs, has something been added for regular coffins too? Enabling every one of those for burial (or, most likely forgetting to until miasma is filling up your tavern) is kind of annoying.

    Flood-fill bedrooms - if we're setting a bunch of bedrooms for the tavern, will we still have to go back to set the location one at a time, or can this also be mass-selected?


Always the same z level!  Any fundamental change to the 'building' concept is going to have to wait until the map rewrite.
:
"