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[MMad]

"Measure of lethality" might be making things overcomplicated.

Pfft. DF is all about being overly complicted. :p

Seriously though, since this kind of thing wouldn't really be exposed to the end user except in the RAWs (which only modders see anyway), I think increased customizability at the cost of simplicity is a worthy trade-off.

[Tormy]

"Measure of lethality" might be making things overcomplicated.

Pfft. DF is all about being overly complicted. :p

Seriously though, since this kind of thing wouldn't really be exposed to the end user except in the RAWs (which only modders see anyway), I think increased customizability at the cost of simplicity is a worthy trade-off.

Hm, do you find DF overly complicated right now? I think that all parts of the game are easily understandable, once the player is getting used to the ASCII graphics.

[Footkerchief]

Pfft. DF is all about being overly complicted. :p

Seriously though, since this kind of thing wouldn't really be exposed to the end user except in the RAWs (which only modders see anyway), I think increased customizability at the cost of simplicity is a worthy trade-off.

Oh, I'm all for increased customizability.  What I meant is quantifying lethality beyond "you need all of 'em" and "you only need one of 'em" opens up a vast gray area that I can't think of a good way to tackle.  Just making a binary distinction is difficult enough, as I showed.

Another approach would be to extend the game's hardcoded ways of dealing with eye loss, etc. -- lose one [SIGHT] and you can't see as well, lose all of them and you're blind -- to apply to brains, hearts etc. as well.  However, this still wouldn't give the flexibility needed to create an octopus, which has one necessary heart, plus two gill hearts of which it only needs one (I think).

[Rooster]

I have a question:
How long army arc is being developed, 'cause I'm going to be worried if it will take more than 2.5D arc

[Mike Mayday]

Footkerchief:
Then organs should be divided into cumulative (eyes for seeing, legs for walking, kidneys for...) and necessary (vocal cords and tongue for speech).

[MMad]

Hm, do you find DF overly complicated right now? I think that all parts of the game are easily understandable, once the player is getting used to the ASCII graphics.

Not complicated in the sense that they're hard to understand (although that's certainly true for some aspects of the game), but rather in the sense that the way many things are handled is way, way, way more complex and detailed than any other game would dare attempt. But most of that complexity is of course not pointless, since it all adds up to make an experienced like no other. Which is of course why we love DF.

[Aqizzar]

I remember the first time I was playing LCS, I got shot in the mouth and the game announced that I'd lost my tongue and 36 teeth.  Nice to see some of that character moving into DF.  I love how comprehensive the new bodyparts are.  Six different groups of teeth.  And relative bodypart sizes?  You know what that means right?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

You strike the Frog Demon in its massive belly!
It is cloven asunder!

[Necro]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

You strike the Frog Demon in its massive belly!
It is cloven asunder!

Its huge guts fall to the cavern floor!

[Mike Mayday]

The acidic guts digest through the Obsidian Cavern Floor!

[Akroma]

oh wow, eyelids ?

now it is offical, we have more detail than even the goriest games ever made

I mean, hey, every game can divide different hit-zones, and if you are really lucky, even the occasional broken bones.


But now:

Urist McUnlucky cancels sleep: Can't close eyes.


....now all we need is the ability to specificaly target eye-lids

[Tormy]

I have a question:
How long army arc is being developed, 'cause I'm going to be worried if it will take more than 2.5D arc

Well I don't want to disappoint you...but it will take a lot of time. Even the next release is kinda far [hopefully December, but it's possible that it will be January/February even], and that release will "only" contain some basic parts of the full army arc. So it's impossible to tell that when we gonna have a fully functional army arc... 

[Footkerchief]

Footkerchief:
Then organs should be divided into cumulative (eyes for seeing, legs for walking, kidneys for...) and necessary (vocal cords and tongue for speech).

I agree.  It's just that it can't be done with the current organ format since, like I was saying, the game doesn't know that a left kidney and right kidney are both kidneys and are therefore cumulative with regard to each other -- they just have the word "kidney" in common, and that's not enough.

It would have to be like [REDUNDANCY:ORGAN_KIDNEY], a tag applied to ALL of the kidneys so that the game could use the string "ORGAN_KIDNEY" to know that the kidneys are redundant with each other.  What string you use doesn't matter as long as it's unique within the body, it's just a declaration of a "redundancy class."  So for the octopus, you would have the main heart with no redundancy tag, plus the two gill hearts which would have a tag like [REDUNDANCY:HEART_GILL].  Bingo.

Anyway, I'm just going on about this because I think the DF body tree system is fascinating.  Toady probably already implemented a better solution along with all the other organ changes.

I wonder if "send in a chitin tissue to fill the skin role in the exoskeleton plan" means that you actually create the chitin in the creature material list and then send that material.  I suppose for things like iron men you would also have to be able to pass materials from outside the creature definition, i.e. iron.  This lays the framework for some amazing stuff, like an antman's exoskeleton melting off his body based on the chitin material's melting point, etc.

[penguinofhonor]

Will we be able to determine certain body layers' hardness? So we can have a creature with a hard exoskeleton but a soft, easy to gouge out inside.

[Footkerchief]

Will we be able to determine certain body layers' hardness? So we can have a creature with a hard exoskeleton but a soft, easy to gouge out inside.

I was wondering about this too, in the context of material lists in general.  It would be nice to be able to individually specify material properties such as hardness, sharpness, and strength (catchall for tensile, shear, compressive, etc.) with hardcoded defaults based on the material category (e.g. silk shouldn't be sharp unless otherwise specified).  Dragons with exceptionally strong bones, feathertree treants easier to kill, flint being sharper than granite but not as sharp as obsidian, chitin being hard but brittle.

[Neonivek]

I wonder if Skin will be one entity or several... hmmm

I suspect it will be an entity for every external part of the body for the most part (excluding some such as the eyes) as otherwise it could make silly instant flaying scenes.