you've said in the past that you intend to update the bugtracker when you have time - is there any chance of that happening before the commercial release? it is over a decade[!] out of date now, after all.
in a similar vein: is there any chance of updating the forums to https? http is rather antiquated at this point - my browser complains every time i open the site, lol.
Quietust:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8334258#msg8334258Schmaven:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8334273#msg8334273Time feels even less available now, but I still wanted to do it before the post-release excitement. We'll see what happens. And yeah, regarding Quietust's comment, I'm not sure it'll help with browser complaints in any case. I'm not actually sure if the forum will demand all avatars be https instead after the change, or if it'll still want http. So all avatars may also vanish as well ha ha.
The purple miasma certainly gets the point across - don't go here, it's NASTY! But... I'm wondering if you might consider making it transparent? I never thought it was right that we can't even see what's underneath the stench cloud. Then again, it does add a little bit of !FUN! by way of potential surprises.
Oh, it's definitely going to be translucent to some degree. We haven't done a lot of the flows (dragonfire, water mist, etc.) yet.
When it is done, will people be able to switch between graphics and ascii? This might be important for community games.
Eric Blank:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8334452#msg8334452delphonso:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8334464#msg8334464Yeah, the saves should be compatible between the Premium and Classic versions, and Premium (or Classic people with graphics mods installed) should also be able to switch between them, probably on the fly though I haven't implemented that yet so it's not 100% settled.
The coming week(s) it should also become more apparent whether pre-Premium saves will be transferable to the new versions. That is: Having worked on the save/mod restructuring, does it seem like the Premium release (and corresponding Classic release) will be compatible with old saves? If it comes down to writing some tool that transforms old saves/raws into new ones, has this already been done, is it something you might revisit later, or do you expect the community to figure it out (if possible)?
Buttery_Mess:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8335415#msg8335415LordBaal:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8335443#msg8335443FantasticDorf:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8335451#msg8335451It looks like it would be pretty time-consuming at this point. A lot has changed, more than I was expecting when I started. I'm not sure how much time there will be later for this kind of project, but I have the structure of the old saves, so I should be able to be of use to any community project that arises, and maybe we'll be able to get to it.
With whatever progress or inclination towards tutorialization you're doing for the steam release, do you think your work there will influence the hastening or later-groundwork implementation of the scenario arc?
Some of it might overlap, if there are any concrete goals, though the scenarios in the end mostly have to do with fortress subgroups and the entity rewrite/upgrade, which we're not touching.
- What's with the weird hardcoded materials like amber, pearl, coral, filth, and the unknown substance?
- What does Dwarf Fortress's commitment to realism mean for, uh, sex-related stuff?
- Once the Myth and Magic update is done, do you think y'all'll focus on smaller things (e.g. fixing bugs, making tweaks, optimizing things, etc.) as the community stays tided over by the update for a while?
Shonai_Dweller:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8336057#msg8336057clinodev:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8336073#msg8336073PatrikLundell:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8336076#msg8336076Shonai_Dweller:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8336135#msg8336135PatrikLundell:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8336278#msg8336278FantasticDorf:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8336333#msg8336333Egan_BW:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8336352#msg8336352Eric Blank:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8336609#msg8336609ZM5:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8336704#msg8336704- We had foreign trade goods, I think, from outside the world map? I'm really having trouble remembering. They had nowhere to live in the raws, since the raws are tied to e.g. geology or reaction products, so they just ended up hard-coded forever. There's no reason at all why they couldn't just be in a file with some special tags as needed, aside from it taking a modest amount of time, the barrier to all things.
- Don't have any particular plans here.
- Myth and Magic being done is pretty far off, so I don't think it'd be productive to speculate about the work flow after that. We try to do some fixing of old issues after major releases, but it never ends up being long enough to really satisfy anybody. On the other hand, before the Myth and Magic release is done, while it is ongoing, we were hoping to really be in the two-branch system, where some small things might be fixed while we continue the work on features, in some different way than we'd been doing to this point.
Have you considered making the graphical side of the Premium/Classic division be purely a tile set one, i.e. have the same UI in both versions/modes and just have the tiles used for the game being different? As far as I can see it would mean less work to make a single UI and less work to maintain a single one.
However, it might give a weird impression to have a "normal" UI paired with character based tiles in the game (and, presumably, the tiles in the UI representing in-game things). There may also be contractual issues making the UI elements unavailable for use in the Classic version.
Mr Crabman:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8336080#msg8336080PatrikLundell (op):
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8336278#msg8336278Mr Crabman:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8336286#msg8336286Ah, you mean using the UI portion of the artist-prepared graphics in the Classic version as well? I don't think that's in the cards. So many of the buttons have sprites on them and such it would be jarring, and Classic also has at least a possibility of still living in the terminal/console type grid world, though that'd also be affected by using a few extra sheets as previously discussed. I agree it would save some trouble.
I may as well ask a thought I had the other day, while thinking about the new style for military patrols: How will notes (as in, tile markers) work with the premium version? Will they be using text symbols, abstract symbols, or actual sprites?
We have a few placeholder symbols now, which are 32x32 sprites, but drawn by me, so they are right now "bad abstract symbols". By the end, hopefully they'll be a better range.
Below is the raws for plump helmets, but what I don't understand is, what is the deal with the MUSHROOM material? It's not used in another token (like the SEED, STRUCTURAL and DRINK materials are). so what's going on with it? This is incidentally, the only place in the raws that MUSHROOM_TEMPLATE is used (not even plump helmet men or dimple cups), making it even more mysterious.
Ha ha, I can't find a code link for it either. I assume the mushrooms the dwarves eat are using the structural material. Looks like it is just an extra material hanging in limbo. I don't know if it was ever used or not.
I failed to see any world tile border indications in the video. Does that mean you can actually have embarks straddling borders of world tiles?
Regardless, as someone who always enables grids whenever possible in games, I'd suggest the introduction of an option to show world tile and intermediate tile boundaries at least (character mode probably doesn't need a grid at the one tile per tile scale, but I'd still want to know where the world tile boundaries are for the zoomed in mode).
If nothing else, a grid would help answering the inevitable question of players why half of the single biome embark suddenly freezes over while the other half doesn't for a world tile straddling embark (and, conversely, it can be used to deliberately seek out straddling, for various effects).
Yeah, you can embark anywhere now.
Most biome effects don't respect grid boundaries, since there's a lot of bleed across from the fractal corner seeding (though temperature has some straight line effect still I'm assuming), but at least for the placement of the icon on the world map I suppose it would be informative.
- Why are good wetlands blue instead of cyan?
- Is it true that the difference between primordial and circumstantial evil regions is that primordial ones appear as dark red/gray, and circumstantial ones appear as light/dark magenta?
- Are there any plans to have flora or fauna unique to anti-savage regions?
voliol:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8337836#msg8337836BlueManedHawk:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8337947#msg8337947voliol:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8338097#msg8338097Putnam:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8338161#msg8338161BlueManedHawk (op):
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8338320#msg8338320- I don't remember if there was some iteration where it removed an ambiguity with another good biome. If not, then probably because it looks wetter.
- So, in ASCII, for most regions (not oceans apparently), there's a special variable that says whether an evil region is gray-red, or light/dark magenta. It defaults to zero, which is the magenta version, but when the "evilify" region function is called, it is randomized from 0-1. There's also a version of this function used for circumstantially evil areas, and it appears to also set the variable from 0-1. If either of those things aren't working, then the colors would probably all be magenta.
- Anti-savage places are supposed to be places where stuff has been hunted off by civilization (though they also get generated in advance), so it wasn't supposed to have anything special going on. We may see the myth/magic region changes remove this element as it is currently used though, along with good/evil distinctions, replacing it with something that can encompass more properties, including the sorts of things you might be thinking of here.
Currently Demons, boogeymen etc. are bound to evil spheres like darkness, death, horror. And good creatures are biased to Light and Life spheres. Is it possible in the future M&M mechanic to have the opposite? For example light creatures are terrorizing common folks and dark creatures are good and helpful.
Mr Crabman:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8338498#msg8338498I'd expect more variety here, yeah, though as Mr Crabman says, sometimes it can be a stretch for a given sphere to be different than what it seems most likely to be.
I just got to thinking something: In 0.34.07, mining was changed so that mining out a tile of ordinary stone had a 25% chance of producing a loose stone. At the same time, the yield of the “make rock blocks” reaction was changed to produce four blocks from each stone instead of the one block it had previously produced. Why weren’t other reactions that use ordinary stone (such as reactions for stone furniture or stone crafts) changed to increase their yields?
That was a long time ago, so I'm not sure. Size has never made much sense, though I like one table per stone - crafts are very iffy though. I think the change was just meant to be useful for constructions, though I'm not even sure what state constructions were in back then.
How will elevation be shown on the new embark screen? Will it be the same as classic version but changing the whole map?
Will the current pathfinding bug be fixed? The one when if you have several digging designations one above another miners run up and down constantly to dig portions of halls instead of just digging one of them and then move to another.
There's a brief flash of it in the video. There's an overlay of symbols you can see, covering the whole map.
I'm not sure which bugs will be fixed at first. We certainly can't get to all of them.
Are some of the features/capabilities from the likes of community tools such as "Legends Viewer" and "Legends Browser" on the table for the official legends mode for the Steam release?
PatrikLundell:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8338931#msg8338931There's not a lot of time to do a variety of features, so we may be limited to hyperlinks and tabs.
1. About what you said in your latest devlog:
Mods store version compatibility information, so saves should be able to update their mods if the authors provide when they release new versions. I've also generally restructured the data and raw folders so that more of the text files are encompassed in the object/mod system.
Do you mean that the mods can store information about compatibility with their own previous versions? Or is "version compatability information" referring to compatibility with different versions of DF?
2. Is there more to come for modding/save changes beyond what's been completed already/covered in this devlog?
3. Oh, speaking of mod version compatibility, assuming it's about save compatibility with previous mod versions, how would a mod author know if their mod is save compatible (trying out their mod updates would probably reveal this, but I have a deeper question kind of)?
As far as I know, currently, lots of changes (particularly adding objects, and basically all ENTITY changes) won't actually work in existing saves (because for instance, new creatures need to be populated at the start of worldgen to actually show up), but won't cause an existing save to break (so someone can update the mod even if they won't get all the benefits), whereas some changes will break existing saves (the only ones I know of are removing objects and changing body parts: https://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=1271).
So basically, what kind of mod updates other than changing body parts or removing object IDs will break/destabilize a save? (if you expect this answer to change due to more modding/raw changes, you may as well wait until it's finalized to answer this)
1. I was referring to their own versions, but they can also reference the versions of other mods, including the vanilla pieces considered as mods.
2. Nothing specifically, but some more could change especially as we cross the Steam Workshop threshold.
3. Same as they do now - I'm not sure what I can do to help aside from the usual release notes. It's an opt-in part of the info file, so they can also just let the old saves try to load, or enforce a new world with every version if they prefer, and the game will try to work it out as best it can, as it does now. I'm sure modders at this point know better than I do which kind of changes are troublesome - I can't think of additional save-breaking examples immediately. The idea was just to let authors indicate that at major version points in their own mods they'd rather have people start a new world than try to keep pulling saves forward if they'd prefer, or to cut down on ongoing issue reports by allowing them to add a cutoff when something comes up.
Considering you're farther along in an adjacent topic, do you know now if Steam Workshop support will be available at the initial release, or whether that's something to fiddle with after?
Last word was that it's quite a bit more complicated to implement than the first impression, but our single-file modding system is simple enough that hopefully we can still get it in initially, or at least give it a shot and see what obstacles come up.
[quote author=Eric Blank
If modifications are done to the vanilla raw/objects folder directly instead of packed into a mod zip file, does the game treat them like theyre vanilla objects, and then additional mods are applied on top of those per the load order?
Do you yet have a means of handling mod conflicts, for instance if two mods both modify creature_standard.txt? Are you open to suggestions on ways to handle or reduce conflicts? I had a few immediate ideas actually
[/quote]
Su:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8340044#msg8340044If you alter the base game files directly, the game has no idea this has happened, and treats them as the vanilla objects.
Suggestions threads are always welcome - people have made some regarding mod management already and it's helpful to see what people want here especially since modding is naturally community-oriented.
As Su says, the load order is the new main way of managing conflicts, and also the manual tagging of conflicting mods (which I imagine will mostly just apply to mods in use by a lot of people, since it's a manual process.) It seems difficult to try and tackle any meaningful conflict detection in code. People will just need to be mindful of the mods they are installing, but I'm open to ideas people have, though I won't be able to act on a lot of them initially.
1.Just how customizable are mythologies going to be? Will we be able to make our own from scratch?
2.Are drawbridges going to get nerfed with the siege improvements? Pretty silly how you can squish a whole army with them right now.
3.Are diseases a planned feature?
4.After the magic update will there be procedural sins?
5.How are necromancer experiments going to look like in the steam version?
6.Will we be able to use the same creation myth for multiple worlds?
i imagine this will have much the same answer, but - is there any chance of seige engine projectiles moving to an arc-based trajectory, instead of being "locked" to a single z-level, in the seige improvements? most specifically for the catapult, with the ballistae it's much less obvious that something is funky.
PatrikLundell:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8340907#msg8340907PatrikLundell has covered 1/2. Some basic drawbridge change may be possible, since we'll be tackling some things that feel like simple exploits.
3. I suppose 'planned' is a strange word at this point, since so many things have a mention here or there. I'm not sure where they fit in to our existing list of releases, but they are important it feels like, for the proper world vibe, and can also be arbitrarily interesting. And sadly relevant.
4. Ha ha, this is quite possible in fact. It's already implied in the reincarnation and final soul disposition texts of the prototype, though "proper conduct" isn't detailed anywhere yet. The first instance it gets defined though, I don't see how it wouldn't be done so procedurally, to some degree. A lot depends on the kind of conduct we can detect though, so in that way, it might remain lackluster for a bit.
5. We haven't revisited it with the new artists yet, so I have no idea what we'll end up with now.
6. This should be theoretically possible. The missing step I think is a kind of partial export feature that's compatible with the editors. We have the xml export now, and no editors - it seems prudent to keep some kind of compatibility in mind there as we add stuff in.
Catapult arcs: Not 100% sure where the siege engines are going! There's always been this feel that they are tied to the whole moving fortress thing, but that would put them after the siege rewrite (and more with the map rewrite), which also feels weird. Fortunately we have arc projectiles ever since we did minecarts, so this isn't so unimaginable, anyway, though one of the issues has always been that our sky just isn't that high, so arcs run into some immediate trouble. I don't remember what happens when projectiles hit the top of the play area currently, if they just vanish or what, but that would need to be dealt with.
Will the post-steam army update include something like armor for war animals?
It's been on the related lists forever. Who knows what we'll end up with though!
1. How active will Gods be during play in either Adventure or Fortress modes (obviously it would depend on the characteristics and motivations of said Gods), will some Gods actually alter the environment, manifest, or intervene in mortal affairs, or will they remain stagnant/deistic after Myth Generation?
1.1 If they will interact in the world as you play the game, would there be any variance or nuance as to the level of interaction? Would some Gods alter the weather while others casually delete continents for fun and actively show their presence?
2. In Adventure mode, will the new procedurally generated magic systems require a new complex screen/UI for casting spells? Or will it just be a plain list of spells and a "Press X to Cast!"
1/1.1. An arbitrary level of activity is the plan, along the lines of a setting. It's mainly an AI question, which we'll have to tackle anyway for sufficiently powerful wizards. Since powers are somewhat tied to themes/areas of influence/etc., I'd expect a variety of involvement levels, whatever we get to for other users of those powers and perhaps a bit more.
2. Really depends on the generated system! Even as the interactions currently stand, there can be a number of inputs, and I expect that sometimes there'll be nested menus or multistage rituals, and in other systems it might be linked to e.g. the move-to-attack type behavior and they can pop off as fast as a single standard input without any other direction needed at all.
When will we be able to see an example of the `info.txt` file for mods, and examples of the new raws/modding format?
I'm not sure. It's not done yet, but I don't think it'll be a problem posting one once it feels settled.
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Topic: Future of the Fortress (Read 3139791 times)