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[Shonai_Dweller]

Setting tombs in the new interface seems actually harder than previously (making a 1x1 zone on every coffin) unless you enclose every coffin in its own room and use the multi command.

Is that something that needs more development (to have multi recognise lots of unenclosed coffins as separate burial places) or is your vision of dwarven burial to have each coffin in its own room (and therefore system is working as intended).

(Also because the tombs are zones, when you designate a memorial hall over the graveyard it says it's "overlapping" which I think reduces the value, right? Guess that's not a big deal but I do like to avoid overlapping zones...)

[FantasticDorf]

- Why doesn't the official sprite for beak dogs show them with the rainbow-colored skin that's still in their raws?

I recall Toady mentioning that they were partially based on ThreeToe's peach-faced lovebirds, but that now that the game has actual peach-face lovebirds they shifted towards another of the inspirations. The other inspiration being the graboids from Tremors 2. I got no idea if this change was initiated by the brothers, or was one made by the artists that they agreed to.

I always thought they were the bird mounts (known as 'chicken leg' or cockatrice) from Golden Axe to be honest based on the description and traits.

[voliol]

- Why doesn't the official sprite for beak dogs show them with the rainbow-colored skin that's still in their raws?

I recall Toady mentioning that they were partially based on ThreeToe's peach-faced lovebirds, but that now that the game has actual peach-face lovebirds they shifted towards another of the inspirations. The other inspiration being the graboids from Tremors 2. I got no idea if this change was initiated by the brothers, or was one made by the artists that they agreed to.

I always thought they were the bird mounts (known as 'chicken leg' or cockatrice) from Golden Axe to be honest based on the description and traits.

Hmm, I wonder if maybe they were too (I'm sure it has been answered somewhere). Here's what Toady had to say back in 2009:

The original inspirations [for the beak dogs] were, as far as I remember, those things from tremors 2 and for riding, yeah, the labyrinth things, though we didn't get the beaks from that, and the original cautionsaurus.  Velociprators weren't an inspiration -- I think that just came up in that thread and I was trying to describe it in those terms.  Our crayon pictures of them devolved pretty far away from that though, and they end up looking kind of like wingless featherless versions of my brother's lovebirds.  I don't think they have little arms any more.

[Miuramir]

... is your vision of dwarven burial to have each coffin in its own room (and therefore system is working as intended).

I believe the intent is that dwarves prefer and hope for their own tomb, like they prefer and hope for their own bedroom.  New and challenge forts may not have that luxury, but part of what keeps a dwarf going during hardships is the knowledge that they will be properly memorialized for all eternity upon death.  Of course, as dwarves increase in status their expectations about what is an appropriate tomb increase, along with that of their other rooms.  In some versions dwarves with nice tombs would go there occasionally to admire the statuary, etc. although I'm not sure if that happens currently.  Now that we can more easily have specific statues commissioned, having a statue of each dwarf in their tomb is fairly high on my to-do list. 

That said, a "Mausoleum" zone analogous to the "Dormitory" zone, for temporary or emergency housing of dwarves in bulk while you're building their actual rooms / tombs, would certainly seem to be a logical extension. 

[GOTOTOTOE]

will df ever support higher population counts? fortresses typically cap (mostly due to performance reasons) at 200, in worldgen dwarven civilizations typically get in the thousands (with the largest ive seen at 140000) while human typically get into the tens of thousands, with a lot of their population being stacked in town sites, which again, due to performance issues, are unplayable. relative to our world (in the medieval period) though, even the largest human settlements pale in comparison to most small to medium sized historical cities, and player fortresses barely pass as villages, to the point that its easier to think of the various entities as citystates rather than more widespread empires and nations (something which fits the pretty small ingame world size pretty well, and a direction i think df should actually lean into). similiar games like songs of syx usually have their player settlements reach in the thousands, and while i totally understand that this performance cap is due to technological limitations (which the afformentioned game doesn't have), can we expect a raise in site population performance anytime soon? metropolises being larger than irl hamlets and armies being larger than in the dozens would help great for immersion, imo

[Eric Blank]

One would hope things get better, but that depends partially on advances in cpu and ram technology and drivers. I upgraded my system to ddr4 ram and saw huge improvement in speed for instance. It still slows down, but not to 5fps like it used to. Now I get 15ish in my 180 dorf fort.

Better handling of town populations in adventure mode would be great, but it will probably take the form of "anyone who isn't a historical figure isn't allowed to path or think unless a player or historical figure is currently interacting with them" or just not loading non historical figures that don't cover important positions like a single shopkeeper per shop or tavern and a few units set aside for guards

[GOTOTOTOE]

One would hope things get better, but that depends partially on advances in cpu and ram technology and drivers. I upgraded my system to ddr4 ram and saw huge improvement in speed for instance. It still slows down, but not to 5fps like it used to. Now I get 15ish in my 180 dorf fort.

Better handling of town populations in adventure mode would be great, but it will probably take the form of "anyone who isn't a historical figure isn't allowed to path or think unless a player or historical figure is currently interacting with them" or just not loading non historical figures that don't cover important positions like a single shopkeeper per shop or tavern and a few units set aside for guards

i feel like thatd take depth away though :/

[Vivalas]

One would hope things get better, but that depends partially on advances in cpu and ram technology and drivers. I upgraded my system to ddr4 ram and saw huge improvement in speed for instance. It still slows down, but not to 5fps like it used to. Now I get 15ish in my 180 dorf fort.

Better handling of town populations in adventure mode would be great, but it will probably take the form of "anyone who isn't a historical figure isn't allowed to path or think unless a player or historical figure is currently interacting with them" or just not loading non historical figures that don't cover important positions like a single shopkeeper per shop or tavern and a few units set aside for guards

It doesn't even need to be this restrictive, I think like 90% of it is random conversations. Which, to be fair, was in the development log when real time conversations were added. And I like the various things like people going out to get water. But I think you can be selective in what's shown to the player and simulated and still reach a good middleground.

Like, if we just ignored conversations from people who weren't in sight, then ran a few rounds in silent when you open a door so not everyone is immediately greeting at once, that would go a long way. In most of these settlements, the population is just standing around talking, so you can disable pathfinding anyways until units actually need to go out to get water or get in a brawl or something.

[LuuBluum]

Looks like Steam/Itch has been a massive success (Grats!).  After you have established a health care fund, have you considered using some of the extra money to hire professional programming help?  Either to ease your workload or help clean & optimize the code.

Knowing Toady's intent somewhat, from a recent AMA on Reddit, the proverbial pendulum appears to be swinging in the direction of the latter option.

And according to the most recent Steam update, it seems Putnam has been brought on to help with coding the game proper, so we have our answer.

Congratulations to Putnam! I have full confidence in your ability to help.

[☼Obsidian Short Sword☼]

Congratulations to Putnam! I have full confidence in your ability to help.

+1

[Manveru Taurënér]

Huge congrats to Putnam indeed!

I assume this might very well be clarified soon enough anyway by either Putnam, Tarn or Kitfox, but I'm curious if there's a specific focus that Putnam is currently set to have?

I might be wrong but I'd assume Toady will want to keep the big picture, foundational feature coding of the game to himself still.

[squamous]

1. I've noticed in the current version, you're no longer able to assign "pet" sapients to a squad. In prior versions you could, for example, mod the game to make dwarves embark with trolls, and then assign those trolls to a squad led by a dwarf and give them weapons and armor and all that. Is the current absence of this feature a bug or intentional? If the latter I understand given that sort of thing will probably get a more nuanced system in the future but a lot of mods used it, so if its gone for good it'd be good to know.

2. For awhile now cannibalism has been completely impossible even if the civ has ethics that allow for it. Are there any plans to change that in the near future?

[Inarius]

I was here for the same reason : Congratulation to Putnam ! He deserves this.

[jipehog]

Since then, we created the stress feedback thread, read the comments, and have collected a bunch of notes.  We're planning on addressing a portion of the list for the Steam release (or before, with one of the patches, however that ends up working out), and hopefully we'll land somewhere more pleasant while not falling back to the permanent euphoria days.  I don't have a definite list, since the work will be coupled with some numeric investigation - as I recall, players running experiments found that unmet needs weren't actually a stressor, just more of an annoying blaring siren which doesn't actually cause much stress (which needs to be looked at for that reason), and I need to see how the numbers are actually shaking out on the famous rain rememberance example vs. the body hauling work vs. cave adaptation nausea vs. etc.  Then there are the more positive ideas along the lines of people comforting each other more and having some more fort-wide happy thoughts when the player does things like win sieges.  We still want poorly run forts to have trouble, but forts that are run well should have more isolated/fixable problems, and those should be explained well and feel satisfying.

How did the stress feedback shape up? Any insights about mechanics involved

[Shonai_Dweller]

Wiki states Advanced worldgen setting BEAST_END_YEAR checks for dead Megabeasts and Titans. Is it just Megabeasts and Titans? Or do semi-megabeasts and forgotten beasts count? And is every Megabeast and Titan a historical figure? Or are there pools of abstract "Megabeast pops" somewhere?
I ask because my settings are to end at 50% with checks starting in the year 250, but I've just generated a 1000 year old world in which (according to Legends Mode historical figures list) 35 of 36 Megabeasts and 13 of 18 Titans are dead. So just wanted to check exactly what it's checking for before sending a bug report.

(And in a 2nd 1000 year worldgen 36 of 36 Megabeasts are dead and 13 of 18 Titans are dead, but worldgen didn't stop. I know it does check something as I have another worldgen set which checks for 30% dead at year 165 and that fairly regularly stops in the year 165.)

Is it possible that 50 as a setting just doesn't work?