So bludgeoning weapons denies most of the armor bonus from breastplate and mail? I know it does IRL. Does this mean leather does better against it, or is it still as bad?
Yeah, that's right. There's an overall issue remaining that I was going to handle when I do padding or don't do padding, which is the overall notion of thickness. I think it fudges that in the calcs right now, but the item needs an extra raw number most likely.
Castes can be either male/female, or neuter (not-specified). If you have a female caste with a ratio of 1, a male caste with a ratio of 10, and a neuter caste with a ratio of 200 or something, that would give you your anatomically-correct Ant-person colony?
Sort of. As far as has been indicated, everything is still limited to the "ONE MATE EVER" problem.
Speaking of which, Toady, has that changed at all? Are all creatures still tied to one mate for their whole lives, or will there be any kind of allowance for deaths?
It's all still the same as far as marriage goes. I guess they would be partially anatomically correct, although certain eusocial insect worker females still have the capability to lay eggs (most likely unfertilized) so what's really needed is further work on exactly who does what with whom.
How will magma pools/pipes be integrated into the new underground structure? I can't very well see the current straight-pipe magma tubes coming up through complex cave structures like that, so what'll they look like, exactly?
I dunno. For the same reason I've left out underground rivers for now, there will likely be some limitations while I get used to working in the new space. There will clearly still be magma, but I might not have time to work in anything interesting.
So, with the new items and such (crutches etc.), what are you going to do for the 437 code points to represent them? Are we going to loose some of the unassigned tiles, or are already in use item tiles to be used, like '\' , '|' , and '/' ? Bandages as '[', or as the bolt of cloth symbol (would look appropriate and would look right in most fancy tile sets too)?
I haven't decided yet for crutches and splints yet. I think they provisionally just have a '-', but that doesn't mean anything. A lot of the medical stuff is still unfinished.
Speaking of which, will there be igneous intrusions and the like, with the surrounding rock having undergone contact metamorphism, e.g. hornfels (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hornfels) and related things?
Nah, there's nothing very interesting going on. I still lack stalact/gmites and various other critters as well.
1) With the new underground features have new creatures been added? Or was it just redoing how they worked without adding any new creatures.
2) Do you have any plans to put the new body layers system in use right away with current creatures? Like for example the common idea of a dragon's scales being stronger on the back while weak on the belly?
1) Aside from the revealed HFS spoiler, not much or anything, though I'm not done and something might happen -- it probably wouldn't be right to limit all the new venom functionality to the HFS, for example, and things like spiders and scorpions might be updated.
2) That particular example would need new body parts or location information, but in general, there will be some updates, but nothing extreme. I want to start with things working, then I can move on.
Toady, any though of adding z-levels to rooms?
Actually, more generally, how plausible is it to make all designation-type features work over z-levels?
The way rooms currently flow out, it would take a bit of a rewrite to do Z rooms -- for instance, if you wanted to go up a level to check out how your flow is going, it might focus on a different building, and the whole flow system is a bit uncomfortable in 3D. There are just some little things.
It wouldn't be that hard with designations, since they use the rectangular format. Some of the newer rectangular tools work over Z levels, but I haven't updated designations yet.
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I wonder if the same randomization love is going to HFS monsters?
So will there still be the current HFS in the new version in edition to the random undergound MegaBeasts?
Toady, does the respawning of underground creatures extend to HFS?
So by HFS monsters, you mean the deep stuff, rather than HFS more broadly speaking (of which the random monsters are a part)? In that case, I'm not spoiling anything, he he he. The deep stuff has been stripped out and partially replaced. I still have some work to do there. It should be a bit different, a bit the same, and always a threat rather than a one-time problem (though of course with things like rewall and so on, we're still awaiting the siege rewrite for it to be a permanent threat if you use one of the tricks to nullify it).
My bigger worry is whether these awesome new one-off megabeasts will survive more that 30 years of worldgen.
I really doubt they're generated on embark -- that would keep them from having any interesting histories.
They are generated at the beginning, but, being forgotten beasts, they don't get to play like the other critters. In this way, they are always assured to be around. I might soften that up a bit once these things are more survivable, and I haven't tested how survivable megabeasts are yet because I haven't rewritten world gen combat yet. This isn't the whole story though, concerning the outdoors and megabeasts. I don't remember if I spoiled that part at the meetup or not. Maybe someone can remind me. Perhaps I need to make another adventure.
thrips
fixed now, thanks!
How do you plan to get this creatures into engravings? Would it be possible to get a rough description of a monster froma engraving somehow?
Right now, they'd just be referred to as forgotten beasts. I had a plan to sneak in the statue/figurine art rewrite so that I could scatter statues of them down there with all of the proper descriptive information, but I think I'm out of time.
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titles/styles
The eventual idea was to allow a creature to gain multiple titles from multiple civilizations, some self-styled and some used by other people, and so on. The main restriction here is that I want to do the grammar rewrite first, so that they aren't all of the typical "the adj adj compound-noun of noun" form. Even names like "the Defender of <fort name>" are currently impossible, and those are among the kind I'm most interested in adding.