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[clinodev]

On to an actual question:
The information provided about being able to change the difficulty settings (encounter triggers, wealth, etc.) on embark made me curious about two distinct things. The first was the changing of these setting during an active fort without having to go to save files. Even if this required the game to save, quit, relaunch, and reload, this would be a fantastic storytelling tool, one that is already heavily used by many DF storytellers.

From recent private correspondence, many settings that are currently tucked away in text files, and the init settings specifically, are already included in internal menus, and changes made in those menus go into effect immediately, "[j]ust like any modern game pretty much".

This is super cool from a new player support perspective, as we'll be able to suggest people just drop their pop cap in the menu to 30 or 50 to forstall that early rush, and it'll go into effect without saving the fort and reloading, for instance!

Other things still have to be set at worldgen or per fort embark, though, and I don't have all that info.

[FantasticDorf]

Im not as perturbed by mouse support, or lack of keyboard support. Ill make my mind up on the systems closer to release on whether they suit me personally, but singularly a concern i will say is that consistent fotressmode game-speed might make mouse scrolling too slow to react to fast paced events such as asformentioned difficulty spikes from combat, werebeasts/(necromancer ghouls) etc without leaning on excessive amounts of pausing to take time to finely analyze what to do next.


More questions about the irritation mechanic: 1) Is it a behaviour attached to a token on a creature (such as all or some giant animals through CV's) or a always present enviromental hazard?

2) And does it apply to the naked wildnerness animalpeople as we know it already? (though i would be suprised if animalpeople aboveground were united into their own civ-group alongside subterrenean people given the extreme variety, much least that'd mean a expansion of the entity file, or some hardcoded function)

I dont want to get the idea that a sudden stampede of irritated rhinos can be misinterpreted as a pseudo-siege, but there is getting a slight perceptive disparity over what 'irritation' means and its participants with your ostrich example of mundane animals as a overall mechanic. But maybe im just overthinking it.

[voliol]

Im not as perturbed by mouse support, or lack of keyboard support. Ill make my mind up on the systems closer to release on whether they suit me personally, but singularly a concern i will say is that consistent fotressmode game-speed might make mouse scrolling too slow to react to fast paced events such as asformentioned difficulty spikes from combat, werebeasts/(necromancer ghouls) etc without leaning on excessive amounts of pausing to take time to finely analyze what to do next.
[...]

Whether mouse or keyboard is slower at times (I believe it depends on what times, mouse is slower than hotkeys, but faster than a keyboard cursor), this should not pose a problem as long as the player can pause/unpause at any time.

[brewer bob]

From recent private correspondence, many settings that are currently tucked away in text files, and the init settings specifically, are already included in internal menus, and changes made in those menus go into effect immediately, "[j]ust like any modern game pretty much".

This reminded me of a question I wanted to ask:

With the internal menus for the settings coming, will we still be able to change the settings in d_init.txt, init.txt and other such files? I'm personally more comfortable with editing the settings with a text editor, so I'm curious to know if this option will still be available.

[Pillbo]

I'm totally on board with the UI changes Toady. I hope you don't sacrifice improvements or delay development even longer trying to make dual systems because a few people are scared of changes. If the mouse controls are good people will get over it quickly, and I trust Zach when he says things are getting easier.

[FantasticDorf]

- Making DF into a clone of the clones of DF doesn't seem to be a good way to stand out.

Without trying to derail or add to the bandwagon any further, game development history suggests there is a substantial risk of this happening for market appeal appropriate to the demographic (the subsequent downfall of kiddy platforming games, and then subsequent fall of COD popularity to the point other franchises try to rehash it in response to battle-arena), much the same way i woudn't relate to Slaves to Armok 1 the or the mutant miner demo super-primitive fortresmode to which even later on 2d forts seems relatively odd.

I'm totally on board with the UI changes Toady. I hope you don't sacrifice improvements or delay development even longer trying to make dual systems because a few people are scared of changes. If the mouse controls are good people will get over it quickly, and I trust Zach when he says things are getting easier.

Though another way of looking at it is, the true dawn of Slaves to Armok 3 as a sequel literally or spiritually is almost upon us, given we probably wont recognise the game after the map-rewrite and future arcs. I've made a thread specifically for talking about this avenue of thought.

[squamous]

Will both version of the game receive the same updates other than graphics/UI/mouse support stuff?

[Ziusudra]

Will both version of the game receive the same updates other than graphics/UI/mouse support stuff?

That's the plan:

Dwarf Fortress Classic is not changing. It’ll be updated alongside the new premium versions, just without the new art, music, and Steam Workshop support.

[Codyo]

As many others are saying. I am also in the "super user" camp and I was hoping that Steam DF would have a marriage of keybindings and mouse control so that bulk Mining, Channels, and Build placement could still work. Because honestly the keybindings have long been burned into the genetic memory of my fingers and it would feel weird if I no longer had that ease of access.

Whatever comes I hope puts less strain on my mouse hand. If I could at least guide the cursor with my mouse and use the Enter key for painting things. That would be Blessed.

 

I know this may be a question that's been answered in ancient times, but Toady discussing wanting to provide us with more incentive to break into the cavern layers made me realize I don't think I ever broke into them more than once or twice since they were introduced a million years ago, and I always add extra normal layers to the map before the caverns can spawn.

Does breaking into the caverns still essentially destroy your FPS?  I remember the game losing a ton of FPS back in the day if you broke into them, and it was one of the reasons you didn't want to do that.  Has this already been mitigated, and I am so stuck in my old ways that I never realized it?  Will the steam release include performances fixes for these sorts of common FPS losses?

I'd like to know the answer too for this.

[SammyLiimex]

I've been a user of Dwarf Fortress for a very long time at this point.  I wasn't around for 2D, but I was around since version 27 or 28.  I also would miss all the old keyboard support, but at the same time, I have played Rimworld, Prison Architect, and other similar games that, while I wouldn't call them clones, are obviously heavily inspired by Dwarf Fortress and wouldn't exist in their current states otherwise.

I think one of the reasons those games are so easily doable with a mouse is because theyre simpler and smaller.  Theres only one Zlevel in those games, so they never had to solve how to dig out a 100 Z level stair well to the magma layer.  They never need to compensate for people who draw huge layer sized mining operations where the entire layer is criss-crossing tunnels. They dont need to suddenly construct 50 bedrooms.  But they do have compensatory controls to make their own limited options easy.  For example, if you build a bedroom in rimworld and have it set up how you want, you can use the copy and paste tool to drop five more right next to it.

Does the premium version have tools like this?  For example, if I can designate a bedroom, then copy and paste it a few times, then that will be faster than even the keyboard controls currently are.  Once they are dug out, can I then place all the room's furniture I need, then copy and paste those into the other bedrooms?  I don't want you to actually just become a clone of other games, but all these other games have these Quality of Life features for a reason. 

[Lord Shonus]

Relaying this from over on Something Awful



And if anyone knows where to post something that toady will actually see, please suggest some means of resetting the "don't show this again" checkboxes at, say, world gen. I know I go for months between plays, so if I spend a ton of time on a particular fort, click a few of those checkboxes, drop that fort, and come back to a new one the next year or whatever, I'll have forgotten the now-hidden tutorial stuff by that point.

[Broms]

Are there any plans for updating stockpile settings to either:

• Allow stockpile priorities (Important/High/Medium/Low, defaults to Medium for example) - similar to Rimworld and other games
• Change Allow stockpiles from both give/take from either linked or any, to allowing individual link/any options for either give or take? Ex: Main storage stockpile is set to take/give from all, and it is linked to give to bar stockpile #1. Workshops and such wouldn't be prohibited from taking from the main storage stockpile without a link to the main stockpile.

I bring up #1 because having a low priority central general stockpile has obvious benefits, allowing you to set up more targeted higher priority stockpiles elsewhere. It would make sense for stockpile links to override priority settings.

If option #1 is not viable, then I bring up #2 because it would be useful to have a central general stockpile, and occasionally link new more targeted stockpile to it somewhere else without limiting everything else from taking from the central general stockpile. At the moment once you've introduced one linked stockpile, you're essentially forced to establish links to every workshop or other stockpile that would have otherwise had access to the central general stockpile, making it an all or nothing choice which can cost someone a lot of time depending on the amount of workshops that might use that central general stockpile.

I think this is an area of opportunity that would benefit from some type of polish for new future users.

[Buttery_Mess]

Will it be possible to turn off tooltips?

[voliol]

What was the nature of the bug tipped by Putnam? They had the following to say on Reddit, but ultimately seemed unsure of what it was:

I profiled Dwarf Fortress and found something that was, in long-term worldgen, asymptotically dominating the CPU time spent. I zapped that part of the game's assembly code (this is not advisable) and found that it was causing some specific errors in the errorlog:

Code: [Select]

MOUNTAIN trying to generate musical form without speech or instruments
Impoverished Word Selector
PLAINS trying to generate musical form without speech or instruments
Impoverished Word Selector
Impoverished Word Selector
EVIL trying to generate musical form without speech or instruments
Impoverished Word Selector
EVIL trying to generate musical form without speech or instruments
Impoverished Word Selector
MOUNTAIN trying to generate musical form without speech or instruments****At this point I just contacted the Toady One to see if he had any insight. He suggested removing all artforms from the raws (to be exact, the entity tokens allowing them to be generated) and, yeah, that caused a speedup. Seems he figured out the rest, nice.

Will the fix have a visible footprint on the in-game cultures? I.e. will there be fewer/more books in a given world, or some properties of the former being rarer/more common?

[Tachytaenius]

Are blade scabbards planned for the future, and if so, would they be able to go on one's hip/waist? (More realistic (for longer weapons at least) than on upper body.)