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[Mr Crabman]

1. Can we expect to see new spheres for the myth and magic release?

2. You've mentioned having dragons (and other megabeasts) be randomly generated not just in abilities, but also physical traits/appearance, but with constraints so they are still reasonably called "dragons"; do you have plans to set something up like this for the other, non-megabeast fantasy creatures as well, including dwarves and elves? That is, their appearance, physical traits and culture/default entities.

3. Speaking of entities, will entities be more varied (and random) in the future? It's slightly odd that all members of a species have the same cultural ethics and societal structure, except when they are subsumed into a civilization of another primary species.

4. At some point, will siegers/other creatures no longer have omniscience about which way to go into a fortress and actually potentially even wander into dead ends if someone say, builds a maze?

5. Will hydras eventually regrow destroyed/severed heads?

6. Will there eventually be more motivations for necromancy than obsession with one's own mortality? I'd imagine there are more reasons someone might seek to become a necromancer.

7: Will the likes of clowns and other procedurally generated creatures have some of their generation logic exposed to the raws one day (eg, adding new body types/parts and abilities/interactions that can be had and the like)?

7: That was eventually the plan, though it seems destined to be a mythgen/editor sort of thing.

7. Do you mean it used to be the plan to expose them to the raws, but they won't be anymore? Would this be more restrictive than the original plan? I'm afraid I'm not clearly understanding this response/what is meant by "mythgen/editor".

[PatrikLundell]

:
2. You've mentioned having dragons (and other megabeasts) be randomly generated not just in abilities, but also physical traits/appearance, but with constraints so they are still reasonably called "dragons"; do you have plans to set something up like this for the other, non-megabeast fantasy creatures as well, including dwarves and elves? That is, their appearance, physical traits and culture/default entities.

3. Speaking of entities, will entities be more varied (and random) in the future? It's slightly odd that all members of a species have the same cultural ethics and societal structure, except when they are subsumed into a civilization of another primary species.
:

The "realism" slider concept demands that the sapient races are generated with ordinary world humans at the extreme mundane end and weird thingies at the other one, with "normal" fantasy races corresponding to the current one somewhere in between. Part of that would be to to generate their entities/traits/appearances with more variations at the entity level at the very least.
I would also guess that since entities will be generated, there's no reason to generate multiple civilizations out of one "entity per race" sets when a generator can produce one entity per civ to introduce some variability even when multiple civs start from the same race. There may well be cases where myth/(pre)history results in a single entity splitting, resulting in two civs, but it wouldn't be an odd development if that caused a new entity to be generated out of the original one, or two (or more) new ones forming from the old one, leaving it behind.

6. Will there eventually be more motivations for necromancy than obsession with one's own mortality? I'd imagine there are more reasons someone might seek to become a necromancer.
:
7. Do you mean it used to be the plan to expose them to the raws, but they won't be anymore? Would this be more restrictive than the original plan? I'm afraid I'm not clearly understanding this response/what is meant by "mythgen/editor".

I don't think Dr Frankenstein was obsessed with his own mortality, so I think the answer to 6 is a clear "Yes", with a much less clear "When".

My interpretation of that is that it was the plan to expose the raws, and that time has now been pushed to/through Myth&Magic. The current plan, as I interpret it, is to let Myth&Magic generate the raws, and those raws eventually should be possible to supply manually "from the side" into the editor side of mythgen. There's no guarantee the editor side will contain that functionality on the first Myth&Magic iteration, though.

[Mr Crabman]

My interpretation of that is that it was the plan to expose the raws, and that time has now been pushed to/through Myth&Magic. The current plan, as I interpret it, is to let Myth&Magic generate the raws, and those raws eventually should be possible to supply manually "from the side" into the editor side of mythgen. There's no guarantee the editor side will contain that functionality on the first Myth&Magic iteration, though.

Forgive me, but I'm not sure what you mean about the current plan. If Myth&Magic generates the raws, doesn't that mean those raws are an output, and not a thing that can be given as an input in an editor?

My original question was basically whether it would be possible to specify that one wants to let the "titan generator" use XYZ new modded body plans/parts, materials or interactions when it creates titans (and for other procgen creatures).

[Schmaven]

Forgive me, but I'm not sure what you mean about the current plan. If Myth&Magic generates the raws, doesn't that mean those raws are an output, and not a thing that can be given as an input in an editor

I had that same question; I could see it working that way if it were a 2-step process:
1) Raws are generated / adjusted based on sliders.
2) World is generated using raws as usual.

In that case, one would still be able to edit the raws before actual world gen starts.

[Afghani84]

Are there any plans to revisit the issues with military equipment for the steam release, e.g. woodcutters and miners not being able to use their work tools as weapons? Any other changes planned regarding squads and military interactions?

[voliol]

My interpretation of that is that it was the plan to expose the raws, and that time has now been pushed to/through Myth&Magic. The current plan, as I interpret it, is to let Myth&Magic generate the raws, and those raws eventually should be possible to supply manually "from the side" into the editor side of mythgen. There's no guarantee the editor side will contain that functionality on the first Myth&Magic iteration, though.

Forgive me, but I'm not sure what you mean about the current plan. If Myth&Magic generates the raws, doesn't that mean those raws are an output, and not a thing that can be given as an input in an editor?

My original question was basically whether it would be possible to specify that one wants to let the "titan generator" use XYZ new modded body plans/parts, materials or interactions when it creates titans (and for other procgen creatures).

In DF Talk #28 they talk a bit about this, starting at 33:38, or more exactly about the modding/raws at 36:36.

Fikilili asks "You've mentioned that you're thinking of implementing a dragon randomizer in the game, that would generate different types of dragons, and I wondered how it would work. [etc.]"

The short answer to your question is yes. The talk gives a little lengthier answer taking dragons as an example, but segues into one about Pokémon breeding and Ultima Online chicken fights after a while. I doubt the details have been worked out yet.

[Mr Crabman]

The short answer to your question is yes. The talk gives a little lengthier answer taking dragons as an example, but segues into one about Pokémon breeding and Ultima Online chicken fights after a while. I doubt the details have been worked out yet.

Ah, that's good to hear.

---

1. Will the map rewrite bring us liquid tiles other than water and magma? Rivers of blood would fit right into some more evil biomes, and a moat of honey would be interesting (exhausting siegers with the sheer viscosity of it).

2. Will the map rewrite also be where water no longer freezes instantly?

3. At some point will tiles other than water be affected by temperature? For example, dragonfire being able to actually melt stone walls, or constructions (and other terrain tiles) being able to catch fire and burn when appropriate in contact with magma or fire (ie no more wooden walls to block off magma).

4. Will shields eventually no longer be immune to dragonfire when blocking it? (and presumably other attacks that the material shouldn't be able to withstand).

5. Will werebeasts/other transformations always regenerate the body fully on transforming? There's something to be said thematically about wounds carrying over between forms (I presume this is a technical challenge, especially where body parts don't match up 1-1).

6a. What are your thoughts/ideas about magic related to fate/prophecy/destiny both in worldgen and in play? As in, its technical feasibility and how it could work.

6b. Same question as 6a, but for magic relating to time travel/manipulation? Like stopping time or slowing it down (which I guess is the same as speeding the user up sufficiently technically), or slowing down/freezing the time of specific objects or creatures, and traveling to the future and the past?

7. This might end up being related to the previous 2 questions funny enough, but are there any kinds of magic that you would have liked to have eventually, but which you consider just too impossible/impractical computationally to ever do?

-----

8:

I've got a long question here (well, more a short question, and a lot of explaining what I am asking about); how does the magic generation work/how does it apply constraints at different levels?

By this I mean, some magic may have certain costs, or certain effects it can have, and ways to be learned, sources it can be accessed from, methods by which it can be cast, ranges it can affect, whether it persists or requires constant maintenance, and all kinds of other limitation/ability/way it works.

But some aspects/constraints in a given magic system often can vary between individuals, or bloodlines, or species, or sources (gods, natural forces etc), and other aspects within those same groupings may remain the same, as constant rules and/or themes (and these aspects can naturally "nest" as you go deeper), and these constraints all help to give the magic system a unique "flavor", as well as cement it around some consistent themes.

For example:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

1. Perhaps all members of a certain species can use magic after 1-time exposure to a certain kind of cosmic shard, but the specific powers they have varying wildly from individual to individual (as an expression of themselves or something), with different limits too (eg, one person needs to touch a wall).

2. Maybe all magic in the world can only be used through physical contact (eg, transforming things by touching them, or reviving the dead by touching them etc) or internally (self healing, super stregth etc), but the spheres of magic available vary from species to species.

3. Or perhaps there's all the different kinds of magic and they can be used by all species more or less (with exceptions), and one species can use it only via touch (still a widespread constraint like the last example, but applies at a different level), and others via playing music.

4. Maybe wind magic is based on singing, and magic related to water manipulation all requires touch, and controlling spirits requiring posing, and so on (with each "school" having multiple spells, but still having those same limitations), and all magic works off a D&D style "you must prepare spells in advance" thing.

And in some systems found in real life myth or other media, gods are all basically humanoid or represent some sapient species (maybe they are all humans pretty much and created humans, and all other species are corruptions of that), whereas in others they can be animals, or just totally bizarre/monstrous. Or demons come in a set number of types, or they may be all unique in appearance and power, or maybe all the same as each other (but different from the gods), or may even be basically the same thing as the gods, with the only difference being their motivations, or having nastier spheres.

And all these possible variations would not just be a matter of coincidence (like the RNG rolling the dice on each god separately and ending up with all humanoids, or all magic being triggered by contact), but would be decided at some point as a constraint that would apply to all magic in the world, or to all magic from a certain source, or all magic from a certain bloodline etc etc.

Conceivably there could even be variable in the generator that decides how many exceptions there are to whatever "scoped" rules it creates, so that some worlds could allow some number of exceptions (while others rigidly say "no, all magic is based on singing, and that's it"), and of course some worlds may have more or fewer restrictions at each scope (so perhaps some worlds really would have magic be essentially totally different everywhere you look).

So my question is, how is it planned to work for DF, roughly speaking? What's the system whereby constraints are imposed during worldgen (other than spheres), sometimes at different stages/steps, and how would it decide what scopes to place the constraints at? To be clear, I'm not talking about a myth&magic editor, or even modding or advanced configuration here (because clearly you could force certain constraints manually this way), but the vanilla generator, with configuration being limited to the basic worldgen screen and whatever simple options that has.

I ask because from what I've seen with the mythgen stuff talked about elsewhere, it feels like the only global constraints any world would have, would be magical spheres, and other than that, a lot of it looks just random for each interaction with a given species by a given god/primordial creative force, which seems like it would end up with a bit of a kitchen sink of magic in every single world, rather than allowing it to be possible all magic center among some limited themes/restrictions like most magic systems (themes other than spheres of the actual spells being cast that is); I am probably mistaken though, which is why I ask.

[Silverwing235]

Are there any plans to revisit the issues with military equipment for the steam release, e.g. woodcutters and miners not being able to use their work tools as weapons? Any other changes planned regarding squads and military interactions?

(fixing colour mistake, ignore)

[PatrikLundell]

@Mr_Crabman (previous discussion):
Yes, the mythgen process would generate raws that thus would be output from the process. However, at some point (possible the first iteration) those raws would become "actual" raws, i.e. files containing the descriptions for how to generate the creatures. When the editor support gets implemented it would probably allow you to define bounds within which it would be allowed to generate creatures (e.g. only humanoid body plans, etc.), as well as the actual raw templates.

The short answer to your question is yes. The talk gives a little lengthier answer taking dragons as an example, but segues into one about Pokémon breeding and Ultima Online chicken fights after a while. I doubt the details have been worked out yet.

Ah, that's good to hear.

---

1. Will the map rewrite bring us liquid tiles other than water and magma? Rivers of blood would fit right into some more evil biomes, and a moat of honey would be interesting (exhausting siegers with the sheer viscosity of it).

2. Will the map rewrite also be where water no longer freezes instantly?

3. At some point will tiles other than water be affected by temperature? For example, dragonfire being able to actually melt stone walls, or constructions (and other terrain tiles) being able to catch fire and burn when appropriate in contact with magma or fire (ie no more wooden walls to block off magma).

4. Will shields eventually no longer be immune to dragonfire when blocking it? (and presumably other attacks that the material shouldn't be able to withstand).

5. Will werebeasts/other transformations always regenerate the body fully on transforming? There's something to be said thematically about wounds carrying over between forms (I presume this is a technical challenge, especially where body parts don't match up 1-1).

6a. What are your thoughts/ideas about magic related to fate/prophecy/destiny both in worldgen and in play? As in, its technical feasibility and how it could work.

6b. Same question as 6a, but for magic relating to time travel/manipulation? Like stopping time or slowing it down (which I guess is the same as speeding the user up sufficiently technically), or slowing down/freezing the time of specific objects or creatures, and traveling to the future and the past?

7. This might end up being related to the previous 2 questions funny enough, but are there any kinds of magic that you would have liked to have eventually, but which you consider just too impossible/impractical computationally to ever do?

-----

8:

I've got a long question here (well, more a short question, and a lot of explaining what I am asking about); how does the magic generation work/how does it apply constraints at different levels?

By this I mean, some magic may have certain costs, or certain effects it can have, and ways to be learned, sources it can be accessed from, methods by which it can be cast, ranges it can affect, whether it persists or requires constant maintenance, and all kinds of other limitation/ability/way it works.

But some aspects/constraints in a given magic system often can vary between individuals, or bloodlines, or species, or sources (gods, natural forces etc), and other aspects within those same groupings may remain the same, as constant rules and/or themes (and these aspects can naturally "nest" as you go deeper), and these constraints all help to give the magic system a unique "flavor", as well as cement it around some consistent themes.

For example:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

1. Perhaps all members of a certain species can use magic after 1-time exposure to a certain kind of cosmic shard, but the specific powers they have varying wildly from individual to individual (as an expression of themselves or something), with different limits too (eg, one person needs to touch a wall).

2. Maybe all magic in the world can only be used through physical contact (eg, transforming things by touching them, or reviving the dead by touching them etc) or internally (self healing, super stregth etc), but the spheres of magic available vary from species to species.

3. Or perhaps there's all the different kinds of magic and they can be used by all species more or less (with exceptions), and one species can use it only via touch (still a widespread constraint like the last example, but applies at a different level), and others via playing music.

4. Maybe wind magic is based on singing, and magic related to water manipulation all requires touch, and controlling spirits requiring posing, and so on (with each "school" having multiple spells, but still having those same limitations), and all magic works off a D&D style "you must prepare spells in advance" thing.

And in some systems found in real life myth or other media, gods are all basically humanoid or represent some sapient species (maybe they are all humans pretty much and created humans, and all other species are corruptions of that), whereas in others they can be animals, or just totally bizarre/monstrous. Or demons come in a set number of types, or they may be all unique in appearance and power, or maybe all the same as each other (but different from the gods), or may even be basically the same thing as the gods, with the only difference being their motivations, or having nastier spheres.

And all these possible variations would not just be a matter of coincidence (like the RNG rolling the dice on each god separately and ending up with all humanoids, or all magic being triggered by contact), but would be decided at some point as a constraint that would apply to all magic in the world, or to all magic from a certain source, or all magic from a certain bloodline etc etc.

Conceivably there could even be variable in the generator that decides how many exceptions there are to whatever "scoped" rules it creates, so that some worlds could allow some number of exceptions (while others rigidly say "no, all magic is based on singing, and that's it"), and of course some worlds may have more or fewer restrictions at each scope (so perhaps some worlds really would have magic be essentially totally different everywhere you look).

So my question is, how is it planned to work for DF, roughly speaking? What's the system whereby constraints are imposed during worldgen (other than spheres), sometimes at different stages/steps, and how would it decide what scopes to place the constraints at? To be clear, I'm not talking about a myth&magic editor, or even modding or advanced configuration here (because clearly you could force certain constraints manually this way), but the vanilla generator, with configuration being limited to the basic worldgen screen and whatever simple options that has.

I ask because from what I've seen with the mythgen stuff talked about elsewhere, it feels like the only global constraints any world would have, would be magical spheres, and other than that, a lot of it looks just random for each interaction with a given species by a given god/primordial creative force, which seems like it would end up with a bit of a kitchen sink of magic in every single world, rather than allowing it to be possible all magic center among some limited themes/restrictions like most magic systems (themes other than spheres of the actual spells being cast that is); I am probably mistaken though, which is why I ask.

1. I'd expect the rewrite to allow for additional fluids, because that's something that affects the structures. Whether any additional liquids will be present at the first iteration is a different issue.

5. It's really a technical problem to transform wounds on and through polymorphing, and there are reasons to assume Toady wants to be able to carry wounds through for some transformations, while weres probably should continue to heal fully (at least in some worlds).

6a. The subject has been mentioned in talks. It's tricky, but feasible in principle at least to some extent. Scheduled events are possible, for instance, including allowing for influence to stop them from happening/assisting them into happening. Fate/destiny may be trickier, especially if it would require the universe to turn upside down to prevent the destined person from dying to allow for the destiny to be fulfilled, but it ought to be possible to assist some fates (destined to fall in battle -> greatly increased risk to die when engaged in battle; possibly generate a coup/mutiny against someone hiding from such a destiny), while hard to engineer others (Oidipus, for instance).

6b. Time travel beyond passive witnessing of past event would be a mess. Time speed manipulation is probably more of an issue of whether the results would be interesting and worth the effort required (all timers would somehow have to be set to a different rate, for instance).

8. My understanding is that mythgen would generate the constraints for the magic systems as part of the process such that each system gets a common set of underlying principles/rules. However, there may be more than one magic system in the same world, so you might have bloodline magic, trained magic, species magic, and "divine" magic in the same world but with different constraints for each set (and there's nothing to stop e.g. two bloodlines to appear within the same world with different constraints, or have multiple panthea with different sets of rules for "divine" magic).

[Mr Crabman]

Do you worry that some things that are currently regarded as spoilers/secrets may be spoiled for new players by the myth generator/viewer?

6b. Time travel beyond passive witnessing of past event would be a mess. Time speed manipulation is probably more of an issue of whether the results would be interesting and worth the effort required (all timers would somehow have to be set to a different rate, for instance).


8. My understanding is that mythgen would generate the constraints for the magic systems as part of the process such that each system gets a common set of underlying principles/rules. However, there may be more than one magic system in the same world, so you might have bloodline magic, trained magic, species magic, and "divine" magic in the same world but with different constraints for each set (and there's nothing to stop e.g. two bloodlines to appear within the same world with different constraints, or have multiple panthea with different sets of rules for "divine" magic).

6b:

Perhaps, but I don't think it's so impossible. In worldgen and the unloaded world I feel like it could work similarly to destiny/fate, where some creature or object appears out of "a time portal" or whatever (with some made up memories/personality), and then history gen conspires to make sure that this creature is born (or object is made) and lives up until they "go back to the past" in the state they appeared in.

It probably wouldn't be possible for the player to do though, unless... Toady has said that in some magic update (not first pass), there would be 2-way travel between dimensions/planes, so maybe certain moments of the past could be frozen as a "dimension" code-wise and allowed to be visited? For sure this would mean time travel cannot just be a causal spell probably, and there would have to be specific points you're "allowed" to travel to, since the game would need to save a snapshot of the world to return to that point.

As for future travel, that would be functionally similar to what Toady has said about "resuming worldgen", or whatever that waiting period is after embarking where a week or so passes on the calendar, just on a longer scale.

Time speed manipulation... Yeah, it's a matter of being worth it I guess (though "interesting results", IMO is a given), but I'm curious what the challenges are and if it's being considered. One challenge for sure is that NPC's speeding up time for themselves (or stopping it for the world) would require solving "letting creatures move multiple tiles in 1 tick", and "let them do many more actions in 1 tick". By comparison, slowing down the clocks of other things/the world strikes me as much easier to solve in comparison (and since an adventure-mode player speeding themselves up would manifest as everything else slowing down, that would be easier to implement than letting NPC's do it).

8. I see; I hope then that mythgen is able to frequently make worlds with global constraints across all magic, because the mythgen demos I've seen don't give that impression to me (even within a single magic system of a single species there looks to be little in common between effects and costs, sometimes being a single word and other times requiring flesh).

[PatrikLundell]

Travel to the future is trivial; it's the returning that causes a mess (I believe I've heard of an AD&D pact with an arch demon that had the wisher ask for the death of someone, which the demon fulfilled by time stopping the wisher until the "victim" had died...).

8. My understanding is that costs should be somewhat consistent within each system (but not necessarily worth it), rather than wildly different between different spells within the same system. When it comes to across systems consistency that ought to fall under one or more of the magic sliders.

[Mr Crabman]

Travel to the future is trivial; it's the returning that causes a mess (I believe I've heard of an AD&D pact with an arch demon that had the wisher ask for the death of someone, which the demon fulfilled by time stopping the wisher until the "victim" had died...).

Oh right, I had mistakenly been thinking the problem was knowing what state the past was in so it could be returned to, but you're talking about the grandfather paradox, and possibly also the distinct, but related problem that "you didn't record every single action the player ever commanded, so the very act of going back in time and then going back means everything will be completely different because the fort/adventurers will all be running on AI, and also the past version of the adventurer will act like an NPC if you meet them".

That's actually a pretty big issue, you're right, and the latter is an issue even for passive viewing of the past (because say you observe your own forts past; you'd have to ensure all the same designations/commands are given to the dwarves, and that all RNG/dwarf behavior happens exactly the same); though I still stand by it not being a problem for NPC's because you can just "invent" people from the future and then use the same tricks for destiny/fate to force their later birth/going to the past, but for players going back I suppose the only way around that would be to not bother trying to preserve "the way history originally went" at all and basically just wipe out all player forts and adventurers histories in that world and chalk it up to the butterfly effect or some other cosmic consequence of going back in time.

And you'd have to just not care about the grandfather paradox, perhaps by saying "you actually traveled to an alternate reality, so your "original" history still has your grandfather in it", or sort of half-acknowledge it so that if you mess up your ancestry/act of going back, you turn into a sort of "time ghoul" for lack of a better word, half-existent, maybe with your characters memories being lost as a result.

Or maybe this is just trying way too hard to make an impractical idea work....

[Mr Crabman]

Wouldn't it be nice to have more than 4 season music and perhaps sounds for workshops(hammers/wood saw etc)? As far as I understand it will require very simple coding (play sound.mp3 on loop when tile X is within N distance from center of the screen) but would add to perceived 'polish' of the game.

You mentioned switching engines? Could you elaborate? Do you plan to switch to something like Unity eventually?

I think for release at least, 4 seasons music is enough, and if there were to be more music, it probably shouldn't just be random variations of season music (like autumn track 1, autumn track 2 etc), it should be tied to some aspect of the area you're in, or what's currently going on.

For example, music that plays in evil areas, or in good areas, or music for adventure mode that is seasonal, but plays only when exploring the wilderness/uninhabited areas so you'd have "season music" and "season music in forts/settlements/inhabited places" (and maybe different variations for different settlements; goblin pits and elven forests seem like they would have a different vibe to dwarven forts and hillocks). Maybe also music for invasions/sieges and unleashed clowns, or megabeast attacks, and I'm sure I could come up with a variety of others. You could have many variations of music by using overlapping tracks, as done in some other games:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlHJW_kShVQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaBJ2C7Am6E

For sound effects and ambience, localized workshops might be alright (if there are too many at a time I could see it getting noisy/cluttered, so this might need to be tested).

Not 100% sure about the engines, but I'm certain he's just talking about the graphics engine/renderer; he definitely isn't switching to Unity.

On the topic of audio though, for the longterm, what do you think in terms of expansion of music and sound effects and ambience? Would you aim towards eventually having something with as much extensive variety as SoundSense for example?

[Gtyx1]

1. Are there plans to have the stone materials be tweaked to make them less inferior to say, bones? (in terms of sharpness and whatnot at least)

2. will the guildhall zone option in adventure mode allow for training idle followers within the designated zone? and if so could those followers form a guild?

3. How do Adventurer camps interact with the world? are they recognized as actual settlements that people migrate to and such, or are they nonexistent entities in the eyes of the factions of the world?

[PatrikLundell]

1. Are there plans to have the stone materials be tweaked to make them less inferior to say, bones? (in terms of sharpness and whatnot at least)
:

I suggest you move this suggestion to the suggestion sub forum, adding the reasons you think things should be changed and how they should be changed. The questions in this thread are essentially left to sink into oblivion once they've been answered (i.e. Toady won't go back to this thread to look for things), while he does look a the suggestions, in particular when reworking related functionality.