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[Neonivek]

Thanks again Toady it is always interesting to read your responses and thank you for finally responding to my question after so many attempts to understand it.

Hmm more questions...

Toady in the future will there be castes, or I guess subcastes, that arn't build exactly off probability but rather achievement, circumstance, rank, or even training?
-I guess a mundane example would be a Newt, in ideal circumstances it never becomes a Salamander. A more fantastical example would be the Celestial Heigharchy where gods of higher rank are bestowed with greater power.

I've read a bit about how you are structuring Goblins. Does this mean in the future Adventurers of sufficiant strength will be able to take leadership possitions or at least get friendly with the goblins if they go in and smack the goblins around a bit? In fact I guess you could expand this question to be: Will there be ways in adventure mode to get unfriendly/enemy nations to become friendly with the adventurer?

I guess Ill stop at two questions. Thanks again Toady.

[IndonesiaWarMinister]

Yeah, the Arabs do have superior health-care skills.

BEFORE THE MONGOLS ATE THEM ALL. (The smart ones, I mean)

[Armok]

Wow, lot of interesting answers this time around! And my tree questions got mostly answered!
Those wind visuals look nice, and they also look like another reason why farms should use the same system as other kinds of high grass, possibly some kind of zones wich might also make orchards more consistent with farms in term of interface.

As for castes, presumably using castes that wont actually come up in the game (I think you can set a probability of 0 on them?) might be useful for shuffling tags around if you want to do more complicated stuff whit castes.

[Neonivek]

I think you can set a probability of 0 on them?

That would actually be sort of awsome in advent of a magic system. With artifacts, spells, or miracles that change your castes it could bring forth castes that are dormant within their bodies (Like Neolithic Dwaves)

[LordZorintrhox]

That ^ is awesome.

[lordcooper]

Is it intended to make trees plantable (in the same way as farm crops are) in the future?

It would truly be awesome to be able to grow a thick forest for copping/elf pleasing (don't eat me!)

[Granite26]

FYI

Caste:
   

Entomology. one of the distinct forms among polymorphous social insects, performing a specialized function in the colony, as a queen, worker or soldier.

Helps if you use that definition while thinking about things and not the:

    Sociology. a. an endogamous and hereditary social group limited to persons of the same rank, occupation, economic position, etc., and having mores distinguishing it from other such groups.
b. any rigid system of social distinctions.

one, which'll probably (hopefully?) be a different system

[Mephansteras]

Are the world-gen seeds going to be different in the next version? If not, can we try to recreate current worlds using existing seeds? I know the UG stuff will be different, but would things like continents, overland rivers, and biomes be the same?

Yeah, worlds are quite different, so the seeds are splattered.  The changes I made fixing the pole temperature bug probably splattered even the basic generation, but I guess it's not 100% certain that seeds are corrupt for continent shapes -- of course, if there's a late rejection over underground stuff, then it'll land on a different map overall, etc.  It's difficult to preserve overall maps even using multiple seeds, since it has to assume right now that a civ placement rejection could be the result of the land's shape, but some work could be done in that direction over time, especially if a lot of people care about it.  At the same time, worlds will probably never truly be safe from having their basic seeds splattered by revisions.

Ok, I was mostly curious for the sake of some of the older Community Stories (like Migurst). I really don't think you should stress too much about it, since the vast majority of us are just going to gen new worlds after a new release and not worry about the old ones anyway.

Also, the Caste stuff looks great! I can't wait to get my grubby modding paws on it. 


New Question!
Will there be any changes to the history and site logs that the game outputs for this release?

[Footkerchief]

I've read a bit about how you are structuring Goblins. Does this mean in the future Adventurers of sufficiant strength will be able to take leadership possitions or at least get friendly with the goblins if they go in and smack the goblins around a bit? In fact I guess you could expand this question to be: Will there be ways in adventure mode to get unfriendly/enemy nations to become friendly with the adventurer?

This makes it sound like it:

# Remove demons as forced powers for goblins and have such arrangements arise through mega-beast behavior

Toady, how do you think this will turn out? Any megabeast could be the leader of the goblins' civilizations? Or only demons, but they will need to enslave/kill/destroy first to win such position?

It would be cool if such things could occur to other races too. For instance, we could have a demon-led evil human civilization.

Not all megabeasts are intelligent, so it won't be anything, and the demons will have a proclivity toward wanting to have minions at their disposal, but yeah, they'll need to win their position.  Goblin society makes it easier for them to do, as they are used to kowtowing to the stronger among them and don't care much for appearances, whereas humans are far too xenophobic and afraid of strange things to allow a demon to go through some mechanic like a duel for warlord status -- the same tag that'll make humans consider pointy ears and glowing red eyes less attractive or scary in general might control this.  I'm not saying this is all going in now, but we are getting started.  In any case, a demon can't break into the hereditary dwarven system or the foresty religion of the elves.  And kobolds just don't understand or care about that kind of thing.  So goblins will tend to be the natural fit.  This in the stock universe we don't care about all that much -- the interesting thing will be to program in a first pass on the mechanics and selection process a demon will use to figure out what it wants to do with its life.  It would be cool if eventually the demon can exploit the religious process to turn a group of human bandits into a demon cult or something, but for now, it's just straightforward violence and domination.  A demon might pass into the rulership of humans in this way as well, but it would have to not get killed by them first.

I don't mean to promise anything here, but this is the way we really want to push things.  Having the important figures in the world able to start to make decisions like this that create a more dynamic form of play is one of our primary goals in embarking on this whole project to begin with.  The somewhat silly raw tags that'll come up during this first pass will eventually be expanded just as the tissues and materials have been, into something that makes more sense, but it starts like this, and it has to start some time, which is why this particular demon example has been singled out for exploration.

[decius]

This might be a bad great idea since someone might deliberately maim half their fort in order to unlock the Secret of Dwarven Heart Surgery, but you get the idea.

Fix'd

[Footkerchief]

Are other parts of the game flexible enough to let you treat the male/female castes more or less as a single caste, e.g. can the caste-specific entity positions be set up to allow multiple castes?

With entity positions, gender is a special case and can be the determining factor, but I don't have anything that says "check the caste for this property and use that to determine eligibility".  It's one of those things where I'd either have to write a bunch of code to check on various things, or work in some kind of actual scripting language where the effect on performance is unclear if the checks land in inconvenient locations.  I have no idea what the ideal approach is.

I was actually going for something much more basic -- whether, when defining an entity position, you can do something like...

Code: [Select]

[POSITION:SUPREME_BASILLUMINATOR]
...
[PERMITTED_CASTE:BASILLUSIONIST_MALE]
[PERMITTED_CASTE:BASILLUSIONIST_FEMALE]

...and avoid the unpleasant situation of...

Code: [Select]

[POSITION:SUPREME_BASILLUMINATOR_MALE]
...
[PERMITTED_CASTE:BASILLUSIONIST_MALE]

...

[POSITION:SUPREME_BASILLUMINATOR_FEMALE]
...
[PERMITTED_CASTE:BASILLUSIONIST_FEMALE]

...which could actually cause problems in-game instead of just a slight annoyance in the raws.  This might be so obvious that it went without saying, but I wasn't sure.

[Footkerchief]

Is it intended to make trees plantable (in the same way as farm crops are) in the future?

It would truly be awesome to be able to grow a thick forest for copping/elf pleasing (don't eat me!)

This dev log entry from last year implies that trees should be plantable at some future point:

10/22/2008: [...] I unified the trees and shrubs raws (though they are still split for all intents and purposes when it comes to playing the game, so you can't start planting trees or anything like that at this early stage). [...]

e: and apologies for spamming this thread, I didn't plan this very well

[CobaltKobold]

Also, ASCII wind visuals would be hot.

quick attempt

That would work nicely for an EKG monitor. It has a bit of a matrix feel to it with the green though.

Hmmm...75Hz, you're right. Besides, it's just the old EGA[DF palette] bright and dark greens.

[Thursday Postal]

Also, ASCII wind visuals would be hot.

quick attempt

It'd look real nice with a dwarf in the middle.. maybe a dog or something, out playing in the fields..

[ArkDelgato]

Also, ASCII wind visuals would be hot.

quick attempt

I think this would be the best elf siege ever.

The freakin' grass comes to get you.