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[Criperum]

Regarding the Patrol Route video form Kitfox:
1. Do we have to go down to find our squad as it was done in the beginning of video or it's just to show how awesome the fort is?
2. Can we now recruit more then 10 dwarfes in a squad?

[squamous]

To what extent will we be able to modify the art style? Would it be possible to make something more akin to castlevania sprites with more "realistic" proportions and it simply being a matter of making all the pieces match up, or would artists have to conform to the existing big-headed style for dwarves and such?

[PatrikLundell]

I assume changing the proportions also changes the proportions and placement of all overlays. If so, it's possible, but you'd have to change the complete set of tiles affected by those changes, not just the base tiles themselves (all clothing, all held items, etc.).
This, in turn, means that things that get smaller have to be depicted with a lower pixel count, which probably results in some artistic challenges.

I don't know if the clothing/held item tiles are designed as "uni-racial", i.e. end up in the same location regardless of the race using it. I suspect it is, though, which would raise the question whether that would be hard coded or whether ambitious tile set designers could make the placement dependent on race (and, probably, if that is supported, caste).

[Quietust]

In the z-status screen, other than prepared meals, what else is included in the "Other" category of the Food Stores?

Bonemeal, as it usually is has its own category of powder_misc_creature, sort of nessecity given you could embark ontop of a bonegrinding monster lair and then need somewhere to store the "food", but not really useful unless you find somewhere to mod it in yourself, dwarves dont make a concious effort to attempt to eat it themselves.

A alternative would be like saying you could grind up animal-dye (a powdery substance) out of vermin (sea snails and beetles), which there are some mods to do exactly that to give more expansion to the category. IRL this would be like grinding pangolin scales or big-game horns into 'folk-medicine' as like what exists in certain Asian cultures.

So for the more tame embarks, the "Other" category would most likely only be referring to prepared meals then?

The wiki states that it also includes stuff like flour, syrup, and even dyes.

Looking at my disassembly of 0.47.05, the following items are counted: prepared meals, cheeses, raw (i.e. unprepared) fish, eggs, non-raw-edible plants/growths (since edible ones count as "Plants"), "food-like" globs (e.g. fat/tallow and rock nut paste/cakes), and all plant powders (including dyes).

[Central Speaker Dan]

This is my first post here, so hopefully I got this correct:


I know that, for the steam version of DF, you have enlisted the help of some of the community, including Meph. If the Steam/ItchIO release does well enough, is there any chance that you might contiunue to work with some community members on core developement?
I know that there are a lot of less demanding tasks that could be done by secondary devlopers, such as increasing animal diversity, or creating more detailed bodies for certain types of creature. I'm also aware that the community provides bug-fixes in their mods and mod-packs, thus another task that could potentially be done by a full or part-time emplyee..?
Basically, I'm very excited by the Steam release, and the potential that it's developement has for increasing developement speed and/or quality more generally, even if only in more minor areas of developement.

[Schmaven]

...
The wiki states that it also includes stuff like flour, syrup, and even dyes.

Looking at my disassembly of 0.47.05, the following items are counted: prepared meals, cheeses, raw (i.e. unprepared) fish, eggs, non-raw-edible plants/growths (since edible ones count as "Plants"), "food-like" globs (e.g. fat/tallow and rock nut paste/cakes), and all plant powders (including dyes).

I completely missed that paragraph in my skimming of that wiki page *doh!*  Interesting that dyes are included in food stores.  But plants to make cloth are also in there, so it's consistent.  In the stocks tab, there is category exclusively for prepared meals, so that works for me. 

[PatrikLundell]

@Central Speaker Dan:
Based on previous answers, Meph & Mayday will continue to work on "graphics" for quite some time.

When it comes to code Toady has so far been unwilling to outsource work, partially based on past experience (I believe there's some code he do doesn't quite understand), and it's also the issue with time taken up by management (which the graphics work has necessitated a fair bit of).
My guess is that bulk data production, such as e.g. creature definition, would be less of an issue, but there's still the matter of reviewing the results, which takes time from "real" production, and so far I don't think he's received a community work proposal that's been attractive enough to be accepted (at least in the last 5 or so years). It can also be noted that (perceived or real) "ethics" can get rather thorny when unpaid volunteer work is mixed with paid work for commercial products.

[Central Speaker Dan]

@PatrikLundell
That all makes perfect sense.
I hadn't thought about either the administrative time required to review the results of such work, or the potential volunteer/worker conflict. For the time being I'll assume that the offical response will more-less match yours. Thanks for the quick reply.

[ruiruirui]

Hey Toady One !

Can I help with the title set? I would work for free just to help the development process. I'm not that active on the forum but... I'm willing to make anything possible to help

[voliol]

Hey Toady One !

Can I help with the title set? I would work for free just to help the development process. I'm not that active on the forum but... I'm willing to make anything possible to help

I think that question is best asked to Kitfox, though by the words used in the recent update they may already be covered.

[clinodev]

Hey Toady One !

Can I help with the title set? I would work for free just to help the development process. I'm not that active on the forum but... I'm willing to make anything possible to help

I think that question is best asked to Kitfox, though by the words used in the recent update they may already be covered.

(I passed it on to Kitfox earlier.)

[IndigoFenix]

How are values and spheres evaluated when determining the relationship between two civilizations?

We have a pretty elaborate explanation for how ethics impact the chances of two civs going to war, but I haven't been able to find any calculation as far as values or spheres are concerned.  Does it just add up the total differences in values?  Do similar values reduce the chances of war, as with similar ethics?

[Bumber]

So, in the announcement code there are several checks for adventure mode. If a position is set for the announcement (x != -30000), the type is not one of CREATURE_SOUND, REGULAR_CONVERSATION, CONFLICT_CONVERSATION, or MECHANISM_SOUND, and the adventurer is not one of the units involved, there's a final check that will cause the function to return without doing the announcement.

If I'm not mistaken, it's a check if the 5th bit of the tile's flags is false. This results in a return if the tile is undesignated or designated for UpDownStair, Ramp, or Upstair. It will proceed with the function if the tile is designated for Dig, Channel, or DownStair.

What's the purpose of this check, and is it working as intended? It seems most likely that it should be a check for a hidden tile.


This one's not technically a question, but I'll point it out:
I noticed in the checks for hidden units (used in avoiding announcements if the player can't see any units involved) that it seems like the check for being on a hidden tile won't occur if the unit is in a cage on the ground. This could potentially result in announcements being displayed that shouldn't if a caravan gets spooked and drops a caged animal while exiting through the caverns (I'll create a bug report if I can confirm that.) There might be more substantial implications in other parts of the code.

[Toady One]

How do these other forum members (like Clinodev, PatrikLundell, FantasticDorf and so many others) help answer questions, particularly ones that seem like they would require knowledge of the actual code?  Do they just have amazing memories for when you've answered similar questions in the past?  How do they know so much?

voliol: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8325941#msg8325941
delphonso: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8325946#msg8325946
clinodev: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8325948#msg8325948
PatrikLundell: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8326017#msg8326017
FantasticDorf: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8326108#msg8326108

I suppose I should let the answers speak for themselves there.  And thanks for helping out!

A long time ago, you dealt with a specific problem in ansi,
Doors and floodgates were too bright when made out of brightly colored stones.
So bright that people would refuse and dispose of, doors and floodgates made out of said stone, because of the glare.
The colors of many stones were changed to less bright versions of said regolith, while microcline and orthoclase were given a darker secondary color for doors and floodgates. cinnabar was outright made darker in color to reflect real life better, with the new red being acceptable enough for doors/floodgates.

1. Do you have plans to add more colorations of various stones (I'm assuming this would be post-release)?

2. What does this mean for stones that aren't a solid color even from a fair distance, especially puddingstone or gem walls?
(I've looked at the gem walls in the videos and they don't really stand out)

delphonso: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8325972#msg8325972
FantasticDorf: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8326108#msg8326108
clinodev: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8326170#msg8326170
FantasticDorf: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8326193#msg8326193
PatrikLundell: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8326315#msg8326315

1. We've had some luck with recolors already (e.g. weapons, non-economic minerals, if I recollect), but we haven't widely applied it yet.  I imagine we'll eventually get to everything, but it's quite likely that e.g. wooden objects might all be brown to start (rather than some of the other underground colors.)  But we may end up with a lot more stone/metal code recolors if we can get the balancing right.

2. We built the gem walls out of a few layers with a code recolor of one layer based on their descriptive color and its txt-linked RGB colors (like the data delphonso posted), which seemed to work pretty well.  Some of them seem to pop out okay?  Maybe the darker gem colors don't work as well this way.  But yeah, the conglomerate etc. type walls that would graphically be multicolored haven't been done any justice yet, and it's harder to address specific materials due to how careful we have to be with map tiles and data in the render (vs items, where recolors are way cheaper), so that might take longer to get to on a future pass - the current map wall recolors/tiles/layers we have fall into a limited set of categories.

After the rewriting is complete, will you leave some easter eggs in the game relating the "old" way to play the game ? Like the infamous unfriendly UMKH keys ? Would something happen if you use them ?

I was actually wondering about the intro screen. The opening animation is a reference to 2D DF - it is also iconic, and has a special place in our tiny, cold hearts.
Are we going to see a new opening animation?

FantasticDorf: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8326108#msg8326108

Ha ha ha, I'm not sure any memory of UMKH is an easter egg.  It is too painful.  And if I do leave easter eggs, it seems imperative that I don't tell anybody, I think.

Opening: I'm right at that area, the title and such.  I'm going to do the save structure first, but these questions will need answering.  I don't have the capability to play anything new-fangled in my engine (like, despite working with Kitfox, something like those Boyfriend Dungeon transformation videos are beyond my reach to display ha ha), and I think showing the old animation as it stands might be too confusing for people expecting something not in ASCII, so it has been a thing weighing on me, since I also like my old silly animation.  I have no idea what will pop out of the process currently.

In the z-status screen, other than prepared meals, what else is included in the "Other" category of the Food Stores?

FantasticDorf: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8326726#msg8326726
Schmaven: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8326728#msg8326728
Quietust: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8328618#msg8328618
Schmaven (op): http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8328757#msg8328757

Ha, yeah, I assume Quietust's list is correct, and it's certainly dubiously decided, with dyes and such.  I remember I altered this semi-recently (as in a few months) when I was looking at migrant waves again, and they used a similar calculation with some wrong stuff in it.  Maybe the same function call...  I've forgotten if that fixes it elsewhere...  perhaps.  I know I've noted it down.

(regarding Toady One: "the most popular perhaps being the addition of 1-2 extra glyph sheet")

do you have a shortlist of glyphs to add? will they be based on unicode glyphs, or be entirely custom?

Ha ha ha, I have problems in mind that need to be fixed, but since it has been so far out of reach until now, I didn't think at all about what the glyphs might actually be.  Goblins seem hard, since you wouldn't want to introduce a new sheet from some language and be like "you get to be the goblins!"  But if they don't have to be goblins, they get to be goats and/or geese, so perhaps something farther afield is warranted.  I'd almost certainly use something like a unicode/etc. set of 256 or 512 new ones - if it goes more graphical than that, we have that covered already over in graphics land.  Some sort of slight extension keeping the same ASCII-ish principle seems more proper, if the ASCII truly can't bear it...  which seems true.  That's the general sense, I think, anyway.  A 'q'uadruped style rewrite to, say, pull mountain goats away from 'g' just seems like it creates more problems than it solves.  But maybe not?

Regarding the Patrol Route video form Kitfox:
1. Do we have to go down to find our squad as it was done in the beginning of video or it's just to show how awesome the fort is?
2. Can we now recruit more then 10 dwarfes in a squad?

1. Like recenter on the leader, or other members?  If I remember, you can recenter on the leader and open their sheet, and then we had a discussion about that should happen when you click on each image, or whether we should try to be more unified with other parts of the game and have a recenter icon, despite our total lack of space in that menu.  Currently the images, I think, at least for the leader, but it kinda remains an open question.

2. This is the same as it has always been, in the sense of it being 10 in the raw txt file, but I don't think there's a hard-coded dependence.  I don't remember if the old version had specific problems there.  I've tried to add a lot more scrolling, though I probably missed cases.

To what extent will we be able to modify the art style? Would it be possible to make something more akin to castlevania sprites with more "realistic" proportions and it simply being a matter of making all the pieces match up, or would artists have to conform to the existing big-headed style for dwarves and such?

PatrikLundell: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8328587#msg8328587

Currently, the body/equipment/clothing tiles are layered without pixel-wise offsets needed to be typed in txt files or being hardcoded.  This means that dwarves, goblins, etc. all have their own positioned body/equipment/clothing set images and you can draw whatever you want.

We only have one universal guts picture come to think of it, so there may be a few positions like that which are currently uniform, even between a horse and a person, and if it misses it misses, but overall you can make an entirely different look for the layered civilization creatures if you like.  You can also layer non civilized creatures if you want - if you want to show a giant holding a sock, you can, though eventually the time and memory used would get pretty silly in this system, so there are limits.  I'm not sure if we'll end up with an offset-enabled system in addition in the more distant future, or if we'll just leave it as is.

I know that, for the steam version of DF, you have enlisted the help of some of the community, including Meph. If the Steam/ItchIO release does well enough, is there any chance that you might contiunue to work with some community members on core developement?
I know that there are a lot of less demanding tasks that could be done by secondary devlopers, such as increasing animal diversity, or creating more detailed bodies for certain types of creature. I'm also aware that the community provides bug-fixes in their mods and mod-packs, thus another task that could potentially be done by a full or part-time emplyee..?
Basically, I'm very excited by the Steam release, and the potential that it's developement has for increasing developement speed and/or quality more generally, even if only in more minor areas of developement.

PatrikLundell: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8328765#msg8328765
Central Speaker Dan (op): http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8328772#msg8328772

Yeah, I don't have much to add to PatrikLundell here.  More will certainly be possible if all goes well, but the concerns still apply.  I've considered e.g. releasing the code for world generation, but even that could be a whole can of mess when it comes to proper licensing vs. bug fixes people find and all that (not that people aren't already checking the inner workings and reporting bugs.)  On the other hand, the original porting and SDL work (which was admittedly a bit more self-contained than worldgen would be) went forward and worked, with licenses from the contributors and a continuing code distribution so everybody could share in their work (you can grab it with the linux version currently).

The other way, bringing people in on the closed-source programming side as employees etc., well, it hasn't felt like an option, for a variety of reasons - some of those reasons may vanish, others may remain, but I haven't ruled anything out entirely.

How are values and spheres evaluated when determining the relationship between two civilizations?

We have a pretty elaborate explanation for how ethics impact the chances of two civs going to war, but I haven't been able to find any calculation as far as values or spheres are concerned.  Does it just add up the total differences in values?  Do similar values reduce the chances of war, as with similar ethics?

Lemmeeeessseeeee...  for spheres, the leader looks at their own religion (or their own metaphysical makeup if they are e.g. a demon) and their worship strength (for a demon, it uses a number a little higher than 100%), and sets that against the enemy leader's religion or metaphysical makeup.  It looks for opposing spheres (in the same sense as they oppose when choosing them for gods), and if there are matches, it applies the penalty.  I don't see any positive modifiers immediately.

I'm not sure values were ever involved in the direct comparison calculation, since (I think?) they came later and I didn't get around to adding new calcs or writing the historical sentences etc.  Same seems to be true of the thinking about whether the leader wants to have a war generally - several personality facets matter, but their intellectual valuing of peace as an ideal doesn't seem to enter into it.  And rather than a statement about the world, this is all down to implementation order, ha ha, since they'll only commemorate war-time stuff if they value power or don't value peace, but it doesn't enter into their actual thinking.

So, in the announcement code there are several checks for adventure mode. If a position is set for the announcement (x != -30000), the type is not one of CREATURE_SOUND, REGULAR_CONVERSATION, CONFLICT_CONVERSATION, or MECHANISM_SOUND, and the adventurer is not one of the units involved, there's a final check that will cause the function to return without doing the announcement.

If I'm not mistaken, it's a check if the 5th bit of the tile's flags is false. This results in a return if the tile is undesignated or designated for UpDownStair, Ramp, or Upstair. It will proceed with the function if the tile is designated for Dig, Channel, or DownStair.

What's the purpose of this check, and is it working as intended? It seems most likely that it should be a check for a hidden tile.


This one's not technically a question, but I'll point it out:
I noticed in the checks for hidden units (used in avoiding announcements if the player can't see any units involved) that it seems like the check for being on a hidden tile won't occur if the unit is in a cage on the ground. This could potentially result in announcements being displayed that shouldn't if a caravan gets spooked and drops a caged animal while exiting through the caverns (I'll create a bug report if I can confirm that.) There might be more substantial implications in other parts of the code.

In adventure mode, the visible tile flag is the 5th bit.  It cohabitates with some of the dwarf mode digging stuff to save room.  Since I think the dwarf hidden flag might be if you ever saw it, not if you currently see it, where a new flag was needed.

Re: the hidden check, there's a check right below (in the dwarf mode version) that checks if the unit's location tile is hidden regardless of caged state, and that should prevent the dropped caged unit from firing off any messages themselves, if I found the right part and if that's what you mean, though maybe I'm not getting the situation correctly.  There's a check just above for the caged creature specifically being held by a creature, where it returns that creature's state instead.  But if the caged creature is on the ground, it should continue on to the hidden tile check - though it only does this check if the creature in question is not player-controlled, so you still get messages in the event a player-controlled creature somehow makes it to hidden territory without revealing it.

[clinodev]

Thanks as always for the replies!