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[dikbutdagrate]

@Mr Crabman 
...Sometimes, as seems to be the case here, people dump their questions and run. So, this is just me properly colouring, fixing, and keeping things on track, since dikbutdagrate didn't seem to bother with that at all.

Fixes were made, and I certainly apologize for both the delay and the annoyance. I'm still new to the forums, and I've ben busy getting acquainted with the other boards. Totally unaware that anyone had replied to my query.

Mr. Toad, question: Why is it that the dwarves in world-gen are able to understand how cold an environment is, but not how hot it is? Meaning, they seem to avoid expanding when surrounded by temperatures of absolute zero, but will continue to expand into areas that are DF's equivalent to 2,556,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 degrees Fahrenheit. When I embark in those areas, I get notifications that my dwarf's eyeballs are melting out of their heads, and that my wagon has burst into flames. The rest of the dwarf civ doesn't seem to mind though.

edit: Someone replied to this question, and it is no longer relevant. Another question: Aside from weird floating point math and implementing granular race descriptions, what are the biggest obstacles for world-gen to produce npcs of hybrid castes? So for example, what is holding back the stories we tell about DF from including tales of individual npc half-elves, and dwarven quarter-elves, or heck, even small outcast societies of things like half crabmen-kobolds. I can imagine figuring out which life span an npc inherits would probably be pretty weird, especially when you have elves and goblins running around. Calculating an average life span between whatever and forever seems kind of counter-productive. Apologies if this one has been asked before!

Last one: If Dwarf Fortress could be played as a competitive real time strategy game, over LAN against a real human opponent, in which you share the same map, but with fog of war, and the goal being to wipe out all of your opponents dwarves, what would be your strategy for winning your first game? How would you maximize the value of your starting deployment material? And how do you stop the mad man who deploys seven dwarves maxed out in mining and dodge, who is making a break for the circus, in an effort to flip a coin on who ends up losing first once the clowns arrive?

[PatrikLundell]

Hybrids: That has been discussed many times in the past (for races, not castes, although the standard caste case is very simple and exists in DF: offspring of the male caste and the female caste randomly belong to either parent caste, while same caste creatures won't produce offspring. More complex caste societies again produce offspring that belong to one of the castes, not hybrids). It's a matter of descriptions as well as determining how to determining the characteristics of the offspring for creatures with the same basic body plan (flipping a coin for one or the other as a base for a feature, or interpolate, or a random value in between the two; base of the individuals or their races, or outside the range of either, etc?). The more difficult case is called the Centaur problem here, i.e. how to mash together different body plans into a new creature. Both cases are intended to be addressed at some time in the future, and at least the first problem probably has to be solved during the Myth & Magic arc when procedurally generated races are introduced (not exactly the same, but the logic is probably going to be much the same). Whether the Centaur problem itself will be tackled remains to see (it's also possible to generate weird critters using a number of templates).

The life span of offspring of two races can be determined to be that of either parent or somewhere in between. When one parent is immune to aging the "in between" would have to first realize that the offspring is now aging, and so assign some max value for how old an aging creature can become.
It can also be noted that offspring parameters may not lie within the span of that of the parents. As far as I understand, ligers and tigrons are larger than either parent species, for instance.

[dikbutdagrate]

Hybrids: That has been discussed many times in the past (for races, not castes, although the standard caste case is very simple and exists in DF: offspring of the male caste and the female caste randomly belong to either parent caste, while same caste creatures won't produce offspring. More complex caste societies again produce offspring that belong to one of the castes, not hybrids). It's a matter of descriptions as well as determining how to determining the characteristics of the offspring for creatures with the same basic body plan (flipping a coin for one or the other as a base for a feature, or interpolate, or a random value in between the two; base of the individuals or their races, or outside the range of either, etc?). The more difficult case is called the Centaur problem here, i.e. how to mash together different body plans into a new creature. Both cases are intended to be addressed at some time in the future, and at least the first problem probably has to be solved during the Myth & Magic arc when procedurally generated races are introduced (not exactly the same, but the logic is probably going to be much the same). Whether the Centaur problem itself will be tackled remains to see (it's also possible to generate weird critters using a number of templates).

The life span of offspring of two races can be determined to be that of either parent or somewhere in between. When one parent is immune to aging the "in between" would have to first realize that the offspring is now aging, and so assign some max value for how old an aging creature can become.
It can also be noted that offspring parameters may not lie within the span of that of the parents. As far as I understand, ligers and tigrons are larger than either parent species, for instance.

Thanks Pat! But I thought the Centaur problem was already solved based on what is already featured in game? The example of the centaur seems like an imaginary problem, one which only exists because it seems like it does. You have men with the head of X, hands, whatever, already in game, and a centaur is no different. Distinguishing a severed centaur hoof from a severed centaur torso is really no different than the distinguishing of the severed, limbs, shells, and parts of anything else for any other creature or entity. What does butchering a severed centaur leg turn into? Centaur bones, centaur meat, centaur hair, and centaur hoof. What does an arm or a hand turn into? Centaur meat and centaur bones, albeit with less hair, less meat, and less hoof. A severed centaur leg doesn't produce horse meat, just as its torso doesn't produce people meat. Else we would expect a number of animal-people to produce different types of meat, which derive from entirely different species, depending on which part of their body we dissect.

In regards to body plan inheritance, one could always just go with the mother, as the default, while inheriting some descriptive tag from the father. Doing hardcoded hybrid body plans for the major civs, and just ignoring the beast races entirely, also seems like it would be an okay starting place. 

[Mr Crabman]

Thanks Pat! But I thought the Centaur problem was already solved, based on what is already featured in game? The example of the centaur seems like an imaginary problem, one which only exists because it seems like it does. You have men with the head of X, hands, whatever, already in game, and a centaur is no different.

It isn't solved already; the existing animal men are all manually defined/hardcoded so to speak (that is, Toady had to manually create raw file entries for each and every animal person), not generated procedurally by the game like "centaurs" are supposed to be (centaurs are just an example really; you could create hardcoded centaurs right now, but that would be missing the point).

Distinguishing a severed centaur hoof from a severed centaur torso is really no different than the distinguishing of the severed, limbs, shells, and parts of anything else for any other creature or entity. What does butchering a severed centaur leg turn into? Centaur bones, centaur meat, centaur hair, and centaur hoof. What does an arm or a hand turn into? Centaur meat and centaur bones, albeit with less hair, less meat, and less hoof. A severed centaur leg doesn't produce horse meat, just as its torso doesn't produce people meat. Else we would expect a number of animal-people to produce different types of meat, which derive from entirely different species, depending on which part of their body we dissect. 

They aren't all meant to be individual species; things like "a spell that turns your enemies hands into spiders" also are related to the centaur problem from what I recall, as are curses upon individuals that merge them with other species in general. Sometimes you don't want "Urist McCursedguy meat, Urist McCursedguy ears", you want "dwarf meat, donkey ears".

[voliol]

If I may, I'm redirecting this discussion of the centaur problem to its most recent suggestion thread. It brings up some answers to the points brought up here, but I'm sure there is still room to improve on the topic over there.

[MrWiggles]

Urist had 11 boners today.
One was awkward. This made them feel bad.

[dikbutdagrate]

If I may, I'm redirecting this discussion of the centaur problem to its most recent suggestion thread. It brings up some answers to the points brought up here, but I'm sure there is still room to improve on the topic over there.

No worries Voliol, the man of crab has spoken and I now grasp the error in my perception of the problem (id est in having a semblance of a clue what in the circus people are talking about.) No further elucidation is needed. This community is the pinnacle of helpful.

[Mr Crabman]

Will it be possible to customize the text colors used in various places, and how would this be done? The new cyan text (as seen for example, in the recent new legends mode menu, used for entities/civs) is okay to read in of itself, but I find it really hard to distinguish it from the normal white text around it.

[A_Curious_Cat]

Will it be possible to customize the text colors used in various places, and how would this be done? The new cyan text (as seen for example, in the recent new legends mode menu, used for entities/civs) is okay to read in of itself, but I find it really hard to distinguish it from the normal white text around it.

See here.

[UselessMcMiner]

Why are wars fought over some issues more than others? For example devouring of bodies, tree or animal killing, and trophies. I've been testing warfare for a while and it seems like certain ethics are more likely to trigger wars than others. The main thing that seems odd to me is slavery, which Im guessing wars arent fought over so that dwarves and humans are not constantly at war. Will this be in place forever or will it be changed eventually? Also will noble succession ever be "cleaned up" for the intrigue release? With actual pretenders to the throne and such?

[Ziusudra]

Why are wars fought over some issues more than others? For example devouring of bodies, tree or animal killing, and trophies. I've been testing warfare for a while and it seems like certain ethics are more likely to trigger wars than others. The main thing that seems odd to me is slavery, which Im guessing wars arent fought over so that dwarves and humans are not constantly at war. Will this be in place forever or will it be changed eventually?

There's this post, the questions from that being, is it still accurate, and why just those ethics?

[Mr Crabman]

1. A recent devlog says the most important event of the last 1000 is shown every second in the "worldgen legend chronicles"; what determines the "importance" of an event?

2. Can you move the cursor/camera around the world during worldgen now? It would be nice to see during worldgen what places there are other than The Mischievous Hill in The Land of Funerals, and to have info about them:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

3. Do the responsiveness changes or history readouts slow down worldgen any significant amount? I wonder if perhaps there is some threading going on here, since in principle it would be a lot easier to put UI (or "legends browsing") on a different thread to worldgen, than it would be to do the usual threading suggestions (which would involve huge rewrites), and it would come with noteworthy other potential benefits (like genning multiple worlds at a time).

4. How much is left now to be done before release? Here is a list of things that I've heard need doing, do correct me if some of this is mistaken, or add on anything noteworthy I've missed:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

- Steam workshop API integration
- Steam achievements
- General packaging of the game for Steam and Itch
- Finding out if Linux & Mac can be supported on release, and doing it if they can
- Tutorial stuff, in whatever form that takes
- Re-implementing keyboard shortcuts/hotkeys support
- Ingame options menu for init file stuff
- ASCII/classic version
- Hotkeys/buttons for recentering, follow camera, and stuff like that
- Art to replace some number of placeholder/paint.net menu icons
- Art for procgenned creatures
- Adventure mode
- Object testing arena
- Advanced world creation menu
- The "resource selection" embarking screens (we've seen mockups before, but not sure if they were implemented yet)
- Minecart hauling stuff
- Pressure plate stuff
- Civ screen
- Some info screen tabs (particularly justice stuff, while others are still "in flux" apparently and uncertain about whether they're being kept)
- Diplomacy/petitions
- "New notion of alerts"
- Optional marker/tooltip specifying the "number" of each tile on a designation
- Fixing potential "itty bitty text" problems for large monitors

5. I recall it being said that other OS compatibility would be investigated after the worldgen/embarking was done, around the time when modding and legends, adventure, arena and such stuff were looked at; since we're in that midst now, is there any news on the Linux support front?

6. With the new modding system, is there (or will there be) a way to have "settings/options" for mods in the mod loading menu? Currently it's possible to offer different versions of a mod, or to make a mod modular; just distribute a zip file on DFFD with multiple folders (or just files) inside it and tell people which folders or files to copy into the raws depending on the content they want.

But on Steam, the workshop only allows one "version" of each mod to be hosted per mod, so there wouldn't really be a practical way to make mods have parts that can be enabled or disabled (or to have different "versions" of the same objects), because uploading alternate mods to the workshop would get ugly in a hurry (polluting the workshop with many nearly identical mods). That is, unless it's possible for modders to define some options viewable ingame (like labeled checkboxes) that can enable and disable certain objects or groups of objects, or overwrite certain objects with alternative versions (or even enable/disable certain sections/raw tokens in some objects, so as to reduce duplication).

7. Somewhat related to the last question, one thing that seems like it would be useful is for mods adding new content (eg, new creatures), to be able to "support" multiple different tilesets (at least, the big/popular ones that many people would want) rather than just having only one set of sprites. Would there be some way of supporting this other than the somewhat clumsy solution of just posting supplementary mini graphics packs to the workshop? The "options" mentioned in question 6 wouldn't really be suited to this because for save compatibility reasons, options could probably only be set when first creating a world, whereas graphics should be changeable during gameplay.

8. How are mods differentiated from each other for the purposes of listing dependencies? One could imagine 2 mods happening to use the same name, which could lead to confusion when a player is deciding which mod they need to get (especially if they are mutually incompatible).

9. About mod loading order and overwriting; can raw txt files in different mods share the same name and header text (like `creature_ocean`), or would one overwrite the other? Obviously actual object ID's can't be shared and one has to override the other, but filenames/headers seem like they should be able to only have meaning in the context of that individual mod.

10. Have any decisions been made on what's going to happen to the "classic" fort mode music track now that it doesn't fit alongside the new ones? Is there some place for it in the Steam version even if it's not fort (or adventure) mode?

See here.

Would that just affect the text though (in the Premium version that is), or would it spill over into other places?

[Inarius]

I'm very happy with the possible possibility of browsing legend mode while world gen, something i have dreamt of for a long time. On the one hand, it will cut a "useless" time and, it can help to have a bit more background for the next
steps.


I was wondering, though

You say "The most important event of the last 1000", but how does the world generator "knows" what is "most important" ?

[Eric Blank]

From the steam devlog thread:

As many tabs as I want it is said, but how many tabs until the programme bites it?

This is actually a very important question that I'm interested in and wanted to draw your attention to. Maybe you (Toady) should artificially cap it at the point where it becomes unstable, if only to intercept "my game crashed because I opened 5000 tabs in legends mode" complaints.

[voliol]

What is the not-so-graphical work being done the coming weeks? More Legends mode? Packaging for Steam/itch.io? Classic? Secret?