Are there any plans to add giant desert scorpions back in?
Eric Blank:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8318896#msg8318896voliol:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8318903#msg8318903Giant bark scorpions live in the desert, though it doesn't seem to satisfy people. I'm not sure which desert species people like.
How are big enemies going to be represented visually in Steam version? Will they be multi-tile?
Has there been any thought to visualisation of damage/fight? Once dwarf and the enemy are on adjacent tiles, what will we see/hear?
delphonso:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8319349#msg8319349Mr_Crabman:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8319741#msg8319741Yeah, Mr_Crabman's correct - the larger creatures are displayed at up to 3x2 tiles, but don't actually occupy tiles any differently.
We have the more graphical blood and upcoming corpses and chunks, and we have some effect animation for strikes on the recipients of attacks yet to test. We can't really animate the attacking creatures themselves easily - there are lots and lots of creatures and we need to finish the procedural ones before we even consider going back and adding any frames. The music/sound question is complicated and we'll have to continue updating as we go on that.
would it be possible to change the layer fog in caverns to a darker purpler hue? the reason light works like this irl is because the sky is blue, but underground this wouldn't be the case, meaning right now the caves feel really outside for something hat's supposedly pretty deep
We're at a few places on this - we like the blue outside, and we want to see if it can be merged with a different color inside, and it's unclear if that's going to work. If it doesn't, we may change it. In either case, either the one or 2+ colors will be editable.
1. Assuming it's still not clear whether Linux (and Mac) support will be possible on the Steam release, at what point/milestone in development would this be investigated?
2. Obviously this depends on player feedback, but after the initial Steam release (and fixing any major problems that may arise), would there a second (small) UI pass made (and/or enhancement of modding capabilities/framework), or is it just immediately onto resuming the villain stuff?
3. Can you say roughly what sort of priority/frequency future updates to modding/workshop capabilities or UI enhancements (or even graphical, such as smooth movement between tiles for instance) would have after the initial release (and if there is one, the "smaller second pass") in general? Contingent on player feedback of course.
4. What screens/menus remain to be done for fortress mode? With the military stuff hopefully done by the time you read/respond to this, I think it's the civ screen and whatever is left in the "info hub", but what is left in the info hub, and is there anything else outside the info hub and civ screen?
5. Is the info presented in the top bar final? For instance, I think somewhere there was something asked a while back about whether it might mislead players about needing to keep the entire fort fully active at all times by showing the number of idlers, and on wider screens there's quite a bit of unused space (granted, maybe some of it should be reserved for future updates).
1. I think when fort mode and the lead up from the title screen through world generation to embark to the fort is nearing completion, we're going to see where we are at with the other OSs, the classic conversion, Steam workshop, achievements, legends, adventure, and arena. We need to head toward the minimum viable release before we spend any serious time on anything else, and it's hard to have those discussions with all the involved parties until I have more of an idea when I'll be done with the fort stuff. We're much closer now, anyway. Military felt like a big step.
2+3. It's just impossible to say right now. Everything depends on how the release goes.
4. Minecart hauling stuff. Several tabs on the view sheets. Some pressure plate stuff. The civ screen and the info screen tabs (whichever ones we are keeping, they are still in flux as we go - certainly the justice stuff needs to be done.) Diplomacy / petitions. The new notion of alerts. Smaller stuff like hotkeys for recentering, follow cam, and so forth. Any tutorialization we are going to do. The save/load restructuring, including how mods etc. get loaded/etc. And of course there's doing the map part for embark as well, if you count that toward fort mode.
5. No, it's not. Idlers is gone in the latest videos if I recollect. The main idea on the table was just to make it customizable, since people are interested in different things, sometimes at different times in the same fort. We can add this to the list in question #4! Along with settings generally.
I see there have been changes to workshops, menus, and jobs, and I've seen the graphical representations of these changes, but for most of them I haven't seen corresponding ASCII versions. If I choose to use the ASCII version, will I be able to identify everything immediately or will many things be unfamiliar?
How well does all the information fit into an ASCII screen? How will it look at smaller than 1920x1080 resolution and/or resized windows?
I've seen how lower layers look in the graphical version, will there be similar effects in the ASCII version?
How wed are you to the ANSI colours, will you move to a broader colour palette in the ASCII version at any point?
Are you working in ASCII first and then moving to graphics, or are you working with graphics first and then going back to ASCII?
How do floaty menus work in ASCII? Do they snap to a grid or are they unaligned with the background graphics?
Mr_Crabman:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8320559#msg8320559PatrikLundell:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8320570#msg8320570The replies cover a lot of it (thanks!).
There are lots of menu changes - the new military screen we've been showing for instance, is quite different, and will look basically that way in ASCII.
My dwarf computer is 1366x768, and things work there, and at windows somewhat smaller than that. It's difficult though to preserve things all the way down to 80x25 console sizes (640x300) or even close to that, and there'd need to be an extra push to attain that level of smallness.
The main tie between me and the 16 colors (which even persists in a lot of the graphical text) is just the sheer number of color change calls in the old version. But we're technically decoupled now from both color and glyph count dependencies, as PatrikLundell says. Some of the ASCII issues we had with a white 'g' being a zillion things can be handled now in whatever way we like; the most popular perhaps being the addition of 1-2 extra glyph sheets. For purists, I'm not sure - a Moria-style 'q' for quadruped system might be required and it would still just be totally confusing.
None of the menus are currently 'floaty' in a click-and-drag style, though this is possible at some point. Even then, they'd align with the ASCII grid.
1.Will mythologies and magic systems be customizable? And if that's the case, will they also be exportable?
2.Are there ever going to be procedural weapons?
3.Are cage traps and drawbridges going to get nerfed with the siege improvements?
4.Are guilds and religions going to be expanded upon before the big wait?
5.Are longer weapons like spears ever going to actually have more range?
FantasticDorf:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8322521#msg8322521PlumpHelmetMan:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8322545#msg8322545PatrikLundell:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8322584#msg8322584PlumpHelmetMan:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8322624#msg83226241. The replies cover the first part, and I haven't thought as much about exportability. Certainly if the current xml is any indication, there'd be some form of exporting, and there probably isn't a reason to make it in a format which can't be reincorporated.
2. We have the ones we have now, cordoned off, but yeah, we'd hoped to do it for the main cultures at some point - lots of problems to overcome there, since we can't just throw the player into a deep muck of randomness without them opting in.
3. Should goblins be able to free their friends that get trapped in cages? If they can, should the player be able to lift/drop the cage somehow to keep their prisoner? Should a third goblin go down a hallway where two others have been chopped up by saws? If so, how would they react instead to a maze of traps? How do they deal with an inaccessible fort? It's kind of an arms race thing - the game needs a ton of nerfs, the way things are now, for people that want challenging invasions, but hopefully also we can provide some additional tools. Though our main ideas there involve stuff like moving fortress bits and other complications which seem map-rewrite linked. We'll have to see how it plays out.
4. Probably not very much - things touch upon them in the villains area, for example, so I wouldn't rule it out, but the big entity rewrite is later.
5. It's the plan, yeah, though when the combat update is I'm not sure. We've done reach in side projects and it adds a lot, but it's never seemed to be time for the combat update in DF, as with several other updates. Range/reach is neat both over multiple tiles, but also just for adjacent fighters that have a situation, somewhat like wrestling, when somebody with a dagger might be well within the spear point, to their advantage, or held at the point and almost completely unable to attack, with both fighters attempting to improve their position while/instead of attacking. Another interface nightmare, of course, on top of all the current combat information, especially keeping it consistent when 3+ fighters are involved, but it's good stuff.
On the subject of tackling the more complicated interfaces for Steam, have you had a chance to look at bins & containers in general? i.e. Seeds within bags within barrels within stockpiles.
FantasticDorf:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8322876#msg8322876I'm not sure what you are asking specifically here, in terms of problems to be addressed. There are new conveniences - from the item sheets, you can zip easily down into containers and then back up to whatever/whoever is holding the object, which wasn't possible before, and barrels (and later bins) graphically show their general contents a bit now.
1) Would we maybe be seeing some of this equipment screen being designed for military recycled for domestic trinkets (earrings etc) on a dwarf's person in the future?
2) Lastly, with the slots assigned imparticular would they manifest with the BP of the creature using some of the existing cues like hearing token parts required for earrings? (ei, ettins would have two helmet-slots for two independent heads, or if BP was tokened not to, retracting the choice of a slot)
That last bit is a bit suggestiony, but i have faith that it might hopefully eliminate the long standing recessive code artifact that quadruped people (along the lines of centaurs) wear two pairs of pants and shoes over their hooves.
1. We have a list of their worn/etc. items displayed in the items tab. Do you mean specifically stuff they want to pick up but haven't picked up yet? It doesn't seem as pressing.
2. I haven't changed how the assignments work, so any issues with mods/residents are ongoing. The changes I've made are just in how the existing information is displayed (and getting rid of some pointers and doing some other changes to get at the raid issues, again.)
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8324639#msg8324639
Would like to know the proper names of the enum values, for verification. They're just integers in compiled code, so DFHack has them as best guesses based on use. Posting the correct names would be easier and more useful than answering the original (now unmarked and spoilered) question, which involves a specific segment of code.
DFHack's term "VERMIN_ESCAPED_PET" is either overly specific, DFHack's got something out of order, or Toady's code is checking the wrong one for some reason.
Edit: Just added the integer values to my post and noticed "CONTAINS_ITEM" and "VERMIN_ESCAPED_PET" share a value of 10. This might suggest it's an issue in the code, but "UNIT_HOLDER" doesn't have the same problem.
Quietust:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8325610#msg8325610Yeah, those are the correct names, as Quietust says. There are two different sets of references, because one of them is older and more pointery and bad but I haven't been able to update all of the uses. When it checks for an item's holder, there are three possibilities: it can be held by an item (GENERAL_REF_CONTAINED_IN_ITEM), it can be held by a unit (GENERAL_REF_UNIT_HOLDER), or it can be a vermin event that holds an item - these generally come from escaped pets that get on the ground, because regular vermin don't have an item generated until you pick them up, though I suppose it is possible now to pick up a vermin event, making it an item, and then drop it, so it's not technically always an escaped pet (or there's probably animal trap route as well)? Assuming the item isn't deleted instantly in that case (which I don't remember.) But that's REFERENCE_VERMIN_ESCAPEDPET, one of the older pointery ones that points to the vermin event as the 'container' of the item, where map coordinates are stored.
It has been mentioned before that divine spheres will be customisable to some extend via the Mythgen params/editor. Does it stop there?
Do you intend for spheres to become exposed in the Raws? On one hand, they are supposed to be universal concepts that derive their flavour from intersection, and thus wouldn't need any raw mods. On the other hand, some settings could benefit from revamping or adding spheres. (e.g. The Long Night could split "animals" between "mutants" and "nanites", and add "machine" deities.)
FantasticDorf:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8324966#msg8324966It's sort of similar to custom attributes, which we were also planning, where a world would add some basic new metaphysical creature trait, and then knit it into the procedural systems. Custom spheres are like that - they could be tied to many systems, but they'd lack some of the fundamentalness of the base notions. And this is okay, since it's still a big step! In your example, the ties feel like they are mostly related to raw-defined objects (like machine creatures and items, or however it works), and that's the perfect thing for it. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if over time, our default spheres like "animals" "fish" etc., became custom spheres, while others like "jealousy" or whatever remained base spheres. If we further systematize emotions, actions, etc., even that could change. But we're only going to get to so much, ha ha ha.
So there's some hope for this, overall, to get at things that feel hard-coded, even if it's only 'halfway'. Hopefully it'll be in the ways that matter.
When there's a Steam Release, is there going to be an advertising campaign? Seeing ads for DF would be a ray of sunshine in the darkest timeline.
clinodev:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8325367#msg8325367Ha ha ha, it would be amusing, though I'll generally be trusting Kitfox's judgment on the effectiveness of things per dollar spent etc., which is always changing as the internet/etc. evolves and people ignore some types of things and pay attention to others. We may be doing well enough, since as clinodev says, we've been lucky enough to get attention without pressing too hard for it.