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[FantasticDorf]

Oh, and I've also noticed many bandit forts being continually declared war on by random civilizations, why is this? Is this to cull bandit populations? Because as far as I can tell it doesnt have a major effect on fort populations and instead results in clutter in legends mode with the 1991th pillaging of a random bandit fort being noted.

I usually turn bandits off by setting to 0 on the entity file so more mercs can move in with more world impact (just being hired out is legendsmode contributive for battle etc), but overall bandits are pretty shabby and one more reason i never got as deep into adventuremode because it hampers the scripting side of the roguelike mode, and break the quests they're involved with (some random kobolds for instance in my most major ragequit for adventuremode invalidated the quest by colonizing the town somehow and making it unfufillable to drive the probably outcast refugee bandits away, i never go into adventuremode other than to firstperson goof around really.)

I did have a open mantis report (here) that described in detail that the castles are lacking a sort of throne-room so can't be annexed by AI but if you conquer them directly as a fort it become your own direct holdings skipping the administrator step too, so thats my own hypothesis. So yeah, just hope Toady clips the bug while doing the rounds for a smoother experience.

[TheFlame52]

I usually turn bandits off by setting to 0 on the entity file so more mercs can move in with more world impact (just being hired out is legendsmode contributive for battle etc), but overall bandits are pretty shabby and one more reason i never got as deep into adventuremode because it hampers the scripting side of the roguelike mode, and break the quests they're involved with (some random kobolds for instance in my most major ragequit for adventuremode invalidated the quest by colonizing the town somehow and making it unfufillable to drive the probably outcast refugee bandits away, i never go into adventuremode other than to firstperson goof around really.)

This bug is one of my biggest pet peeves, so I'm glad to hear there's a workaround.

[dikbutdagrate]

I'd expect the technology cut-off to remain at about 1400 even if technology is procedural. That would mean electricity is out of the question, but magic opens a completely different can of arcane worms.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baghdad_Battery

"The Baghdad Battery is the name given to a set of three artifacts which were found together: a ceramic pot, a tube of copper, and a rod of iron. It was discovered in present-day Khujut Rabu, Iraq, close to the metropolis of Ctesiphon, the capital of the Parthian (150 BC – 223 AD) and Sasanian (224–650 AD) empires, and it is believed to date from either of these periods."

[PatrikLundell]

I'd expect the technology cut-off to remain at about 1400 even if technology is procedural. That would mean electricity is out of the question, but magic opens a completely different can of arcane worms.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baghdad_Battery

"The Baghdad Battery is the name given to a set of three artifacts which were found together: a ceramic pot, a tube of copper, and a rod of iron. It was discovered in present-day Khujut Rabu, Iraq, close to the metropolis of Ctesiphon, the capital of the Parthian (150 BC – 223 AD) and Sasanian (224–650 AD) empires, and it is believed to date from either of these periods."

Yes, and steam powered toys existed in ancient times as well. However, neither of these were actually applied.

[Fikilili]

BACK WITH A FRESH BATCH OF QUESTIONS

1. You often mention the famous "Map Rewrite" that will happen... Soon-ish? And although with a name as foreboding as that, it must be very important to the game, what exactly is there to rewrite? What will the map rewrite do/change regarding map/world generation? What will it mean for modders?
2. Regarding culture; symbols and colors don't have the same meaning depending on the culture. For example the color black in Europe is attached to death and grieviances, whereas in China, it usually associated with prosperity and good health. Are there any plans to add cultural differences in DF?
3. Regarding Technology; every civilization seem to have access to the same level of technology no matter what age it is or how far in time the game takes in place. This means that even at the dawn of dwarfkind, they already figured out how to make wacky contraptions, but ten thousand years later, goblins still haven't put one and two together and figured out how to make drawbridges. Do you have any plans regarding technology evolving with time?

BTW, Blind, if you're reading this, it's pronounced "FEE-KEE-LEE-LEE"

[FantasticDorf]

BACK WITH A FRESH BATCH OF QUESTIONS

1. You often mention the famous "Map Rewrite" that will happen... Soon-ish? And although with a name as foreboding as that, it must be very important to the game, what exactly is there to rewrite? What will the map rewrite do/change regarding map/world generation? What will it mean for modders?
2. Regarding culture; symbols and colors don't have the same meaning depending on the culture. For example the color black in Europe is attached to death and grieviances, whereas in China, it usually associated with prosperity and good health. Are there any plans to add cultural differences in DF?
3. Regarding Technology; every civilization seem to have access to the same level of technology no matter what age it is or how far in time the game takes in place. This means that even at the dawn of dwarfkind, they already figured out how to make wacky contraptions, but ten thousand years later, goblins still haven't put one and two together and figured out how to make drawbridges. Do you have any plans regarding technology evolving with time?

BTW, Blind, if you're reading this, it's pronounced "FEE-KEE-LEE-LEE"

Almost got it, just need that 'lime' prefixture on the green /color, and you can fit them all in the same pallete.

1. You often mention the famous "Map Rewrite" that will happen... Soon-ish? And although with a name as foreboding as that, it must be very important to the game, what exactly is there to rewrite? What will the map rewrite do/change regarding map/world generation? What will it mean for modders?

Arcs move slow, Map rewrite begins the roundabout mark of the 'Big Wait' towards the magic arc if you follow development, which is likely to ruin the honeymoon after the initial phases of stabilizing post release and the army arc (if im transcribing what i remember and read correctly, im very tired this morning), but here's to hoping it will be a painless affair that offers plenty of opportunity to play well into 49. or whatever version culminates, in a stable engaging fashion.

Speaking independently as a modder, i look foward to what Toady can manage and if theres any hardcoded junk that can be opened up, like editing biomes directly, sites being more usable to having more locations, more interesting types of sites in general. A very small subset of the community don't exactly moan, but lament some of the prefixtures that always generate certain conditions in worldgen, a atmospheric biome/planetary controller so we can roleplay like its on Mars with no humidity anywhere to make snow in supercold deserts would be nice.

2. Regarding culture; symbols and colors don't have the same meaning depending on the culture. For example the color black in Europe is attached to death and grieviances, whereas in China, it usually associated with prosperity and good health. Are there any plans to add cultural differences in DF?

Its worth mentioning Elves react differently in a minor way to spheres, particularly connected Titans, because the NATURE civilized value makes them interested in trees & great animals, so losing a Titan to a marauding beast-hunter is a very sad event according to references of conversations in adventuremode even amongst dwarves, moreso in elf circles.

So having a value like MORTALITY govern overall response to funuary practices and how they'd wish grim-death upon their enemies may iron out their attitudes and practices but that's just me spinning a hypothetical solution. On colors and connotations im not particularly sure, it might go, overall all the primordial evil and good are red and blue, and eventually if spheres get colors it might look like a technicolor petticoat on presentation.

3. Regarding Technology; every civilization seem to have access to the same level of technology no matter what age it is or how far in time the game takes in place. This means that even at the dawn of dwarfkind, they already figured out how to make wacky contraptions, but ten thousand years later, goblins still haven't put one and two together and figured out how to make drawbridges. Do you have any plans regarding technology evolving with time?

I'd expect the technology cut-off to remain at about 1400 even if technology is procedural. That would mean electricity is out of the question, but magic opens a completely different can of arcane worms.

There aren't as far as i can divine from Toady's archaic replies any plans, but technological progress does pseudo-happen through the frame of "Scholarly" work, there are two relevant but unrealised discoveries for physical objects but aren't yielded in any form. Modding mostly covers the rest when players port to new futuristic, historic or alternative setting, despite teething issues asked before about practical limitations that prevent dwarves talking over computers/mobile flip-phones/fax machines or firing repeating miniguns at each other (most other janky things end up solved).

You'll hit that scholarly technological research limit after a long pondering while, but the most players will probably be manging at the moment is making even more complex fortress systems to utilize the game world, until Toady makes a to-scale recreation of the sparrow light-door from "The Hobbit", by coding in the speed of light (i say figuratively in jest but who knows?). Completely saying nothing like PatrickLundell mentions wisely about magic assisted tech like wands, foppy hats (and imbued artifacts) and eventual work-tools which will have to include a expansive list.

[PatrikLundell]

The map rewrite has been discussed a fair bit over the years (well before the Villains tangent that turned into the current Premium tangent within a tangent).
The purpose of the Map Rewrite is to allow for a number of improvements as well as to allow for new features that currently aren't reasonable to implement. This list is not exhaustive, but may provide an indication of what's it includes:
- Support for the loading of different Z levels separately. This means Adventure Mode wouldn't have to load all the layers of rock below, and would also mean that excursions from a fortress (as trade/war parties, entry into other dimensions/across portals in the same dimension, etc. would be feasible without slowing things down to a crawl. It's more or less necessary to support player activities in multiple areas concurrently.
- Support for multiple maps (such as the normal world and another dimension).
- Support for portals connecting non adjacent parts of the map to each other, both on the same map and to different maps. This can also support maps that wrap around (moving over the edge to the west causes you to enter the east edge of the map, resulting in a cylindrical world, or even wrap around north to south as well as east to west, resulting in a shape that doesn't exist in the real world). It will NOT support spherical worlds, because of the mess caused by trying to turn a sphere into a grid with equally spaced and sized tiles (World maps create enormous distortions close to the poles, which doesn't matter to the real world people as nobody lives there).
- Support for moving "terrain", such as boats and lifts, floating/flying islands, etc.
- Support for sphere influence on terrain/flora/fauna, which probably also supports magic influence over the same things.
- Other support for future expansion. The light/heavy aquifer implementation is a little odd because the data structures have run out of bits to store more properties in. Note that a lot of things the rewrite will support won't actually be implemented until much later, in later arcs. Portals, when they are implemented, will start with one way portals where stuff just appear on the player side, with no access to or view of the other side, for instance.

The Map Rewrite is the first part of the Big Wait, with the second part being the initial implementation of Myth & Magic, which will make use of some of the things permitted by the Map Rewrite. When asked whether the Big Wait could be split up into a Map Rewrite and a Myth & Magic phase a number of years ago, Toady didn't see any point in it. The Premium tangent may change the circumstances, but if it does, it probably won't impact anything until it actually has been experienced (the Premium version decision has already led to the decision to have parallel support/bug fix/minor content development of the released version with the development of the new version, and the longer the Long Wait progresses the more of the new current version content will have to be thrown away and replaced with corresponding content in the next version, resulting in it being implemented twice. At some point it might be considered less work to switch to the Map Rewritten baseline. However, that's purely my speculation).

The Long Wait will be long. An optimistic guess would be 3 years, while pessimistic ones can be considerably longer.

It can be noted that we're still quite a long way from the start of the Long Wait, it's possible it's still further away now than it was when the Premium tangent was embarked on, as there's a lot to be done before it can start (again, the list is probably not complete, and may contain errors as well):
- The Premium release will have to be released (obviously).
- The Premium release bug fixing and immediate problem fixing phase taken care of (this may well take longer than usual, given that the Premium release contains the commercial Premium version, which may require considerably more support and polish than releases have received in the past).
- Implementation of things cut from the release that aren't intended to be cut from the game (Adventure Mode and the Classic versions have been mentioned as candidates for release content cutting of this type).
- Finishing the Villains tangent.
- Improved sieges/army stuff.
- I think there's at least one more point I've forgotten...

[Mr Crabman]

Note that a lot of things the rewrite will support won't actually be implemented until much later, in later arcs. Portals, when they are implemented, will start with one way portals where stuff just appear on the player side, with no access to or view of the other side, for instance.

I don't see why this would have to be the case; sure, getting both locations loaded at the same time would have to come later because it's a much harder thing, but surely players could be able to send things/people through portals and have it work:

- in fort mode, similar to raids, or things moving off the embark map edge in general. Anything that enters the portal gets turned into abstracted "world map" stuff.
- in adventure mode, similar to quick travel, or teleportation (which similarly seems trivial).

Both seem kind of trivial enough to implement once portals are in, on account of them basically being "step on this tile to do something that can already be done in the game".

They're have to be the "blind" portals that you can't see to the other side with, but two-way movement seems doable enough... As long as the portals are all in the same dimension; if other dimensions aren't coded/playable in the first release of portals, it makes sense that you wouldn't be able to venture into them; but then, it could still be that the stuff that came through in the first place could "return" to whatever state they were in before (whether that in some abstracted form like nonloaded histfigs or "common" populations, or just nonexistence) if they went through.

When asked whether the Big Wait could be split up into a Map Rewrite and a Myth & Magic phase a number of years ago, Toady didn't see any point in it.

I'm surprised he didn't; community-sized bug testing seems to be a good enough reason. Also, presumably the rewrite won't literally produce the exact same structure as now; some of the changes just from the map rewrite itself (like performance improvements from not loading all z-layers, or things like cave rivers, and 3d ore veins) would likely be appreciated by many.

[PatrikLundell]

Portals: That's what Toady has said. Sure, you could have portal work like sending people off map now, but that's not the intended direction. Instead, you'd have the dorfs (or zerglets or whatever) stepping/sent through and being controllable on the other side, which requires the implementation of multiple concurrently loaded maps to have been implemented. Thus, the baby steps are taken first. Remember that the volume of potential Myth & Magic arc content is huge, and this probably isn't a prioritized early feature. I'd also expect the first two-way portal to go between two locations in the same world, as that doesn't require the generation of a secondary map. The multiple concurrent location functionality is essentially the same regardless, so it's only the data used that would differ.

Long Wait split: I assume Toady considered re-implementing the old world gen, current races, and some early spheres is too much wasted work when the myth generation is going to replace the world gen to a large extent. Personally I think bug testing and retaining the audience's interest would be worth it, but I don't have insight into Toady's thought processes, nor his knowledge of what he's going to change and how.

[Putnam]

As I recall, proper portals are likely to come in a proper map rewrite anyway, since for all intents and purposes adding portals-to-alternate-dimensions is as "simple" as adding a fourth coordinate to all the position stuff. The main problem is pretty much in loading stuff off-site: same-world and different-dimension portals are just as "hard" in the sense of having to load a bunch of stuff.

[delphonso]

According to Dwarf Fortress Talk 7, and comments you've made in this thread, artifacts are truly indestructible (if atom smashed, etc, they'll just be "hidden" and scrambled during claim/reclaim or adventurer visits.)

I've been wondering about a few nuances to this:

1. Are books and named items treated in the exact same way as other artifacts? (I reckon so, as the game tends to treat them the same way with the 'L' artifacts screen.)

2. Any changes to how 'hidden' is handled, or how artifacts are scrambled after destruction? I've made 2 attempts at destroying books and finding them again and both have failed. I haven't been able to find a proper artifact that was destroyed either. (Ignoring copies of books, which can be destoryed)

Edit: we've started a community fort about this, so we might figure it out on our own. Any info on how artifacts are hidden and discovered again would be interesting. I noticed in the XML dump that lost artifacts are at -100000 z level, which suggests they won't be found by traditional 'wandering around drunkenly' methods.

Also a completely unrelated question:
3. When two sites occupy the same world-tile, the 'c' menu will only show one of those sites and the other is inaccessible to raids/missions unless you send a mission for a person/artifact that might be there. Has this been dealt with in the new and upcoming UI stuff?

Thanks to you and the community for any answers to this!

[clinodev]

A player by the name of Sebastian submitted a quite long compound question for yesterday's interview with Zach and Tarn on BlindiRL's Twitch channel. It was far too long for the format, but I thought it might fit in here. In honor of his efforts, I volunteered to submit it here for Sebastian:

"I have a few questions related to world generation, which turned out longer than I anticipated. Apologies in advance for being so wordy!

As I understand, the prevailing winds are based on the real-life Polar, Ferrel, and Hadley circulation cells, but are they generated to match the pole(s) of the world? Could there be a world generation option to set prevailing winds to be homogeneous across the whole map? Something like the existing option to set a north pole, south pole, both, or neither, but have options for the wind to come mostly from the north, northeast, east, and so on.

What scale do the temperature settings use in the advanced worldgen options? I've heard that the bug with pole-less worlds having extremely hot ""temperate"" biomes is already a known issue, and I know that the actual temperature is affected by rainfall and elevation, but I'm curious what the scale is supposed to be since it doesn't seem to match the ""degrees Urist"" used elsewhere in-game.

Also related to temperature, any rough idea of when we might get more fine-grained distinctions than ""temperate"" and ""tropical""? Maybe even have yearly minimum and maximum temperature values for each region, and have each plant and animal have its own tolerances? At the very least it would be nice to have ""subtropical"" biomes so that we don't have koalas in subarctic climates.

I love that in this game you can generate a world with a very realistic distance/area scale if you have no poles and set a very narrow temperature range. However, there are a few problems that arise when trying to make it as realistic as possible (so as to avoid questions about the geometry and scale of a whole planet the size of even a large DF world, and for the fun of recreating real-life locations), which is why I asked about the wind directions and temperature issues, and my last question is about the vertical scaling.

While it's possible to realistically recreate real places at a 1:1 scale horizontally (a Large DF world is nearly 395000 metres across and could fit Tasmania), you have to either flatten the real elevation range to fit in into DF's 400 2.8m z-levels, or find an area where any salt water is less than 278m deep and the highest elevation above sea level is 840m, and deal with the awkwardness of having the ""mountain"" biome anywhere that's more than 560m above sea level even if there's no big difference in biome IRL. (For reference, Mount Everest is about 9000m above sea level and Challenger Deep is about 11000m below it, or about 3200 and 4000 z-levels respectively.) So basically what I'm asking here is how doable it would be to have deeper oceans and taller mountains. Having a larger world volume to simulate would be a performance issue, but could the map have the same number of z-levels everywhere and have them offset depending on the elevation of the region or something? Isn't that how it already works?"

It doesn't look nearly so big here!

[Quietust]

- Support for portals connecting non adjacent parts of the map to each other, both on the same map and to different maps. This can also support maps that wrap around (moving over the edge to the west causes you to enter the east edge of the map, resulting in a cylindrical world, or even wrap around north to south as well as east to west, resulting in a shape that doesn't exist in the real world).

Technically, that shape does exist in the real world, at least sort of - it's a torus, more commonly recognized as a Donut.

[BlueManedHawk]

- Support for portals connecting non adjacent parts of the map to each other, both on the same map and to different maps. This can also support maps that wrap around (moving over the edge to the west causes you to enter the east edge of the map, resulting in a cylindrical world, or even wrap around north to south as well as east to west, resulting in a shape that doesn't exist in the real world).

Technically, that shape does exist in the real world, at least sort of - it's a torus, more commonly recognized as a Donut.

That's true, but i think they may have meant that it's not a real planetary shape.

[King Mir]

- Support for portals connecting non adjacent parts of the map to each other, both on the same map and to different maps. This can also support maps that wrap around (moving over the edge to the west causes you to enter the east edge of the map, resulting in a cylindrical world, or even wrap around north to south as well as east to west, resulting in a shape that doesn't exist in the real world).

Technically, that shape does exist in the real world, at least sort of - it's a torus, more commonly recognized as a Donut.

Technically toruses are bigger in the outer diameter than the inner and are curved, which does not happen with north and south being linked like this. A triangle's angles on a torus does not add up to 180 degrees.