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[FantasticDorf]

2. How would you handle the possibility/risk of making Steam achievements that later become obsolete or nonsensical/impossible to achieve due to design/mechanical changes in updates?

Maybe they'd just be meta-achievements than anything in game consequetial or over-intrusive.

Complete the tutorial, embark for the first time, play for 1000 hours probably.

4. Why are there only mammal and reptile werebeasts? Was this a design decision, or just about not having time or interest to manually hardcode loads of bird and insect werebeasts and instead waiting for them to be generatable?

Probably for ease of handling additional limbs (which Toady wants to approach more into the Magic or future arcs, in dealing with mutative effects, growing a extra arm and such due to magical exposure etc.) that make avian or spindly invertibrate creatures hard to pull off without keeping a human profile (and no great increase to size), as well as the additional abilities they could hold.

A moat might tide off a were-zebra (maybe not were-hippopotamus) but a were-octopus would probably building destroy all your aquatic floodgates into your fort as a 8 armed menace, GCS web throwers are hard enough, as are flying enemies difficult to deal with. At least having additional tags would probably mean they would be a rarer caste, which casts shadows over creatures such as minotaurs not being a challenge by comparison.

5. How do you manage doing bugfix updates/patches for current versions, while still working on large changes that are not ready to be released to the public (that is, getting the bugfixes/patches in both the release, and in the unreleased version)? I only ask because I wonder how that's possible to practically manage without using a version control system or branches (assuming that hasn't changed).

6. Related to the last thing, how do you keep track of what changes you have made to the codebase and to features?

Last i remember on a similar set of questions, the Tarn brothers have private note-lists of suggestions to draw upon at a later date and also the public development log. I dont think its a excel spreadsheet or anything a technical as that.

I couldnt possibly speculate on that, DF can already be translated into github files (infact quite a lot of it being retrieved is central to the DFhack project), but maybe there's a alternative arrangement in place.

[A_Curious_Cat]

Given that adventurers are asexual, shouldn’t unicorns be friendly towards them?

[Putnam]

Given that adventurers are asexual, shouldn’t unicorns be friendly towards them?

1. adventurers aren't asexual, they explicitly have a special orientation flag set that AFAIK says "I don't have an orientation", which no other units/hist figs do
2. the weird unicorn virgin stuff isn't in the game, so this is kinda a suggestion anyway

[Shonai_Dweller]

Unicorns are vicious horses with an additional gore attack.
Other universes/memes have no relevance to DF. Even if some of it does come across in fan works.

[FantasticDorf]

Given that adventurers are asexual, shouldn’t unicorns be friendly towards them?

Like others have said, there's no recognition of IRL mythos explicitly, nor does the unicorn horn have magic properties (animal sacredness and special parts are things put aside for future arcs) it just hurts a lot to be gored by one, and makes very high quality materials out of its cadaver & bones.

If you want adventurer immunity to unicorns and any other sort of natural creature (not counting many kinds of underground or supernatural life), you can just swear fealty to a elven nation's hearth, and it'll render you immune as a member of their civ encompassing their natural animal protection.

[PatrikLundell]

Is it intentional that elven visitors almost exclusively are members of performance troupes (or villains)? Is it something in elven culture that causes its members to join troupes rather than strike out on their own (and thus sometimes be available for recruitment, as performance troupe recruitment is bugged)?


Edit: In response to Shonai_Dweller's post below: The bug report is https://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=11001, although the actual question is about why elves are almost exclusive to performance troupes. The fact that they're bugged was added as context for why I even care. I expect bugs to be fixed when they get fixed, not when Toady gets bugged about them.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Is it intentional that elven visitors almost exclusively are members of performance troupes (or villains)? Is it something in elven culture that causes its members to join troupes rather than strike out on their own (and thus sometimes be available for recruitment, as performance troupe recruitment is bugged)?

Please link to bugs on the tracker. Nothing more annoying than saying "Hey, Toady, when are you going to fix that bug? You know, the one with elves!" As though he'll have any idea what you're talking about.

[recon1o6]

Will we ever be able to destroy artifacts? This could be useful for some more world events eg destroying a holy relic will cause the adventurer or fortress to be excommunicated, destroying a demon slab could banish them or make the goblins turn on their ruler, a slab with life and death being broken could cause those who read from it to die from a curse/lose their undead

This actually came up in smallhands recently over in community fort. For story reasons I was trying to dispose of a slab. I ended up having to dig a room and drop the room into magma to throw the slab into it and even then its not gone, only "hidden" until reclaim/adventure mode

[FantasticDorf]

Will we ever be able to destroy artifacts? This could be useful for some more world events eg destroying a holy relic will cause the adventurer or fortress to be excommunicated, destroying a demon slab could banish them or make the goblins turn on their ruler, a slab with life and death being broken could cause those who read from it to die from a curse/lose their undead

This actually came up in smallhands recently over in community fort. For story reasons I was trying to dispose of a slab. I ended up having to dig a room and drop the room into magma to throw the slab into it and even then its not gone, only "hidden" until reclaim/adventure mode

Lime-green questions as always please, try not to veer too much into suggestions but i do think there have been some artifact-destruction centric narratives in Threetoes bay12 stories, and also there's obviously artifacts that aren't actually artifact quality, like books & slayer-weapons.

Eventually the question might shift from "artifact quality indestructability" to "items of interest". Thus far the only way to remove a artifact is to chuck it down a bottomless chasm if i remember correctly or let it be stolen/steal it yourself to hide it somewhere else like in the wilderness thanks to keas.

[voliol]

Will we ever be able to destroy artifacts? This could be useful for some more world events eg destroying a holy relic will cause the adventurer or fortress to be excommunicated, destroying a demon slab could banish them or make the goblins turn on their ruler, a slab with life and death being broken could cause those who read from it to die from a curse/lose their undead

Considering how influential the Lord of the Rings is to the fantasy genre in general, and to a game called Dwarf Fortress especially, I have a hard time seeing its premise would not be reproducible in some future version of the game. Also, many non-mood artifacts found in the game (holy relics, named weapons, original books) are destructible already.

[Pillbo]

How are you and Zach holding up to the heatwave? I hope you and all the pets are ok.

[PatrikLundell]

Will we ever be able to destroy artifacts? This could be useful for some more world events eg destroying a holy relic will cause the adventurer or fortress to be excommunicated, destroying a demon slab could banish them or make the goblins turn on their ruler, a slab with life and death being broken could cause those who read from it to die from a curse/lose their undead
:

I thought both atom smashing and SMR annihilation destroyed artifacts?

As others have mentioned, magic means to destroy magic items would make sense post Myth & Magic.

[Bumber]

I thought both atom smashing and SMR annihilation destroyed artifacts?

Pretty sure they reappear in a random spot if you retire and unretire/visit the site.

[recon1o6]

Will we ever be able to destroy artifacts? This could be useful for some more world events eg destroying a holy relic will cause the adventurer or fortress to be excommunicated, destroying a demon slab could banish them or make the goblins turn on their ruler, a slab with life and death being broken could cause those who read from it to die from a curse/lose their undead
:

I thought both atom smashing and SMR annihilation destroyed artifacts?

As others have mentioned, magic means to destroy magic items would make sense post Myth & Magic.

Nope, they get a hidden flag that makes them respawn when reclaiming/unretire+retire/adventure mode

[FantasticDorf]

Hi Toady, i have a question.

What exactly is a WORSHIP_HF token? i noticed it appear in speech raws dialogue for temples when describing the inhouse patron god of a temple when being accepted into it (though i've never actually played a temple induction myself, usually there's nobody around to talk to, to take a quest from) and a few select interesting nuggets about it being connected to demon-leaders/diplomats/trade-liason foolery when used for position-code mainly based on past versions and a little bit of present version tinkering.

I mean what i *think* i've got from my results so far is that its meant to be any sort of dedicated role for gods/pretenders, but its hard to tell because only the vaguest fringes of it is editable from entity_default on a dark-fortress which has the criteria of a living physical "pretender".