Is there a possibility you'll implement predefined automated tasks for dwarves?
More specifically, will the exploration team be able to explore unseen areas by themselves?
I haven't gotten a chance to play a proper long enough to establish priorities yet. We'll see what's needed there, but yeah, it's possible to do that stuff.
Does this mean that there will be within a single world different conventions of appearance specific not only to races, but to civilizations or regions? For example, humans from a kingdom in the north side of the world might all have brilliant green eyes, while those from another kingdom on the other side of the world might be identified by their crooked noses and black hair.
Appearance modifiers might get localized depending on how worldgen genetics are tracked (in particular, whether it allows genetic drift), and it's not clear whether tissue styles will vary between, say, two dwarven civilizations (the dev log does make it sound like they were "lifted into an entity instance," but that doesn't necessarily imply variance).
The genetic profiles are small enough to keep for every individual during world generation, so they've all got them. Each collection of ten pairs that every kingdom gets just has a randomized profile right now. There's little mutation and a ton of selection, so over time, each kingdom should gravitate toward some smaller appearance subset, but the original ten pairs could afford to be constrained initially to create a more established identity. The raw materials are there for it, anyway.
That's things like eye/skin color. For tissue stylings (hair styles), the stylings associated to the entity definition in the raws are currently assigned to entities in random proportions, so one dwarven civ might all braid their beards while another leaves them straight, but the proportions are random enough that it'll mostly be 60-40 mush with nothing really stark and defining at this point.
Yeah, I guess the syndromes would need that info in case the blade crossed a body part boundary. Or are the local effects done on the tissue level?
If you tag them with the LOCALIZED token, it'll hit all of the tissues associated with the wound. There are also options for hitting tissues globally that have certain properties (muscle/functional lung tissue/etc.).
Will creatures actually get naked to bathe? If so, how frequently will they remember to put their clothes back on?
Also, do they dry themselves?
Right now they don't do anything special. I imagine it'll get sorted out eventually.
The one I'm currently not entirely sure about is APP_MOD_IMPORTANCE. If the earlier screenshots hold, it doesn't seem to govern where in the in-game description that trait appears. If it isn't, maybe it's to determine how important the dwarves themselves consider that trait?
The listing is according to the deviation from the norm multiplied by the importance. This lets you control the paragraph listings to some extent, especially when there isn't a lot of variation but variation is importance, or if there's a lot of variation but it's not important.
Do the edges of the map provide support in the current version? If not, are there any protections against the cave-in of the entire surface on small maps with the new cavern systems? While funny, I can see this being a major problem for players, especially if encountered in adventure mode.
I remember having some edge-supported-but-still-caveins, but I don't recall the fix. Collapsing huge sections of the cavern on the layers will be possible one way or the other, of course. Layer maps of all embark sizes have enough pillars to prevent instant cave-ins though.
What will happen to the past year of bug reports? Do you still read those at all? Are you just going to go tabula rasa for your next release, as a lot of the game will have changed by then and a number of problems won't apply anymore?
Also, same question but for the suggestions. I remember you commenting on a lot of those, but today you seem to have a less directly open and interactive policy. Have you simply run out of time to read them?
I think I'm going to leave them there, as a lot of them still apply. I've been reading bug reports but since I'm basically powerless to patch and fix things for people while this release drags on, I haven't been posting in threads.
I haven't run out of time to read them, but I can't really jump into threads anymore. It's hard to keep track of which ones I'm in using the forum software, since it's full of moderated threads, and I can't have too many discussions going because there isn't a lot of time to compose coherent replies. I still read suggestions, though I've fallen behind the last few months.
Also, will we be seeing melanistic leopards and jaguars ('black panthers') in the next version or will we have to mod that in ourselves?
I did these in particular going through because when you are doing jaguar colors, it sort of jumps out. I think I used wikipedia proportions (940:60:1 or something) for regular:black:white. There aren't a lot of animals I did variations for though.
I was just curious as to how big the Dwarf Fortress code base is these days. It seems like it'd be a huge amount of code.
Yeah, Footkerchief pulled out the "Doing a search for the character ;, which ends a statement in C/C++, I get 143431 lines containing it. This doesn't count complex conditionals or additional statements on the same line, and it does count things like "break;" and commented-out code blocks, so it's a rough estimate." from Sept 2007, and I can just do that again... 234095.
Have the underground biomes been extended beyond the CHASM, LAVA and WATER types? In particular, do regions/layers have varying temperatures?
Aside from the magma, I haven't done anything with different temperatures. I'll probably want to add a few more designations to control some critters that don't belong near the surface, but I haven't done it yet. The non-magma layers themselves mostly just have variable water content in terms of biome-like things.
Is there anything stopping me from making all of the Zefie's major organs small enough so that they are nigh unhittable?
I think it's the relative size of a part within its parent that determines the hit chance, so yeah, you should be able to make them like little peas in an otherwise uniform gut or something, if a Zefie has one.
Given the materials changes and such how will the new version compare to the 40d series in terms of speed?
It's more the underground layers and so on that can potentially have effects, I think. There's a slight speed loss from tissues when it actually has to monitor temperatures, but it mostly doesn't have to do that. I haven't done a lot of huge fights, but the arena didn't have a huge lag from the new model as far as I've noticed. There are a few lag issues that need to be resolved in world generation and during embark, but I should be able to handle them.
tarn with the ability to now be able to choose how many z-levels more importantly the underground levels will there be the return of digging Too Deep?
There are some options in the world params for it. And there's more stuff below to keep one occupied.
Now that we have more Z levels down, does worldgen consider crustal thickness, specifically thinning on oceanic plates, rift zones, etc?
Also, do we have intrusive volcanic features such as dikes and sills?
Nah, I haven't done anything interesting there.
When will there be more efficient ways of dealing with excess stone? I know we have ways to get rid of it, but it has to be hauled first and hauling stone one by one is extremely inefficient when we are talking about tens of thousands of rock. A few thousand is doable if you have patience or you use [SPEED:0], but with tens of thousands, it takes quite a while even with [SPEED:0]
Improved hauling, which I imagine has something to do with this in part, is currently #1 on eternal suggestion voting, so I'm going to take a look at it after this release in some reasonable timeframe.
Can we get a confirmation that during the work being done on sparring, the horrible tearing off each other's clothing and using it as a weapon instead of what is actually assigned thing will be fixed?
I'm not sure. There are several places to check, and the ones I looked at didn't have any new conditions. I'll make a note to check it out more thoroughly.
Are we going to see world-gen cities digging too deep at some point?
He he, it almost happened with the last escape from the depths dev log entry, but I decided to push through it a little faster. So, probably not this time, but the dwarves have to be afraid of me suddenly finding time for them.
Toady, if its meaningfully doable at this point, could you make some screenshots of any of the new stuff? I imagine a lot of the interface and features are still screwy, but I'd love to see these unexpected holes in mountains and the new wounds screen.
Are there other things you want to see? I haven't been thinking about it much, and I've been worried things are still a bit rough compared to how they'll be released once I get through the last pass.
will players be able to set the population for when the economy begins thus the arrival of the baron and then the population required for the baron to recive a new title ans for the king to arrive. as well as being able to set the population required for official sieges and elven tree_diplomats to arrive?
Every entity position has an optional population trigger for when it comes into existence, but I think you are stuck with siege/overall triggers for entity activity right now.
will above ground creatures like animal men, ogres, gnomes etc also use equipment?
None of them have associated entities right now. The underground animal peoples have them. The aboveground ones will probably get something at some point, but I'm not sure they'll ever use equipment. Primitive critters that should be using clubs and things will have to achieve some sort of entity status. I'm not sure when that will happen.
Is pathfinding for flying invaders improved with the new version? In the current version my invaders on flying mounts just sort of sit in the air doing nothing forever.
There were some sieger problems I fixed (they only worked on the left edge of the map as a weird 2D holdover), but the flying ones might still have trouble if they somehow get stuck up in the sky. I didn't have trouble during my tests, but I can run a few more with that in mind. Modded-in flying fortress critters are still messed up. It's a difficult problem overall, but fixing siegers is easier, since they'd just need to flood out to a landing spot if they get confused. As has been discussed quite a bit, if you actually wall yourself in (but leave a flying way in), fliers won't use it until you open a door. That's not going to be fixed until there's a (very time-consuming) pathfinding rewrite.
As Dakk asked, can similar things happen with non-tameable/intelligent creatures (like trolls/satyrs/sasquatches)? If that is so, elf/animalpeople alliances have already been realized. So very awesome. Can that apply to (semi)megabeasts? If the creatures can equip items, will their patron entity kit them out with gear?
We were imagining the war beasts wearing all sorts of cute little accessories, but it's not in yet. The taming doesn't work on non-tameable creatures right now, but goblins will have to get their troll buddies in some way if there aren't any that get locally adopted through the entity mechanics (which should probably be brought in line somewhat with this newer system). I might take a look at the trolls before the release at least. It'll depend on the time as usual.
Eventually, in adventure mode, will a player be able to tire out a beast so it can be tamed and ridden?
He he he, I don't know anything about breaking horses. Being able to having ridin' critters and other pets is a must, though, yeah. Dunno when though.
Question for Toady: Have you considered having the level of bodily grime affect work? I'm specifically thinking about penalties associated with having a dirty chef. The chef might contaminate the food and thus affect its value/quality or even cause food poisoning. Or there could be a new bad thought along the lines of, "Was upset to see the food being prepared by a filthy cook."
He he he, I didn't consider it when I was putting the new grime in. I wonder what horrors await when ingestion is actually done as a development item.
would a cyclops ever rule over the goblins (they apparently did a good job of squashing them flat), or do they not have the leadership capabilities needed? Would constant cyclops-squishing lead to goblin cults worshipping cyclops..es(i?), which could then be infiltrated by a pretender god?
They are intelligent, but they don't care about leading a civilization. "POWER" is used for all of that now, in place of its old function of tacking an insta-leader on top of a civ. If I remember, the cyclops is a semi-megabeast, so it isn't worshipped. I think one of them killed 200 goblins in that world, so maybe they should start.
Toady: Demons impersonating imaginary gods is cool and all, but will there be other, perhaps non-sinister, ways for demons to wind up ruling societies? And while it's probably slated for much later, what kind of interaction is there between these physical demons and the gods civilizations come up with? Presumably, those gods will eventually stop being so imaginary all the time.
Demons can walk in and take over murderous societies via challenges (there isn't currently a "value" system aside from the ones implicit in the ethics, so things like "values strength and power" which would apply aren't supported yet). Other than that, the pretender route is the only way right now. Others should be possible once we've got leaders with a bit more autonomy in general (a predecessor to improved sieges, so it should be started reasonably soon after this release).
I have no idea when the gods will become more real, but theoretically yeah, they'd have something to do with something. That might be a good time to start randomizing the metaphysics and doing creation myths, instead of using the fixed model we've got now with titans + demons etc., so that the interactions can be more varied.
I wonder why they aren't getting into dwarves' and elves' civs. Dwarves seem like they'd be humanlike (pantheon, sneak, etc) but elves I'm not so sure of.
Elves worship a regional force, so they are excluded. Dwarves are currently excluded because their monarch position is a non-variable part of their culture that is hereditary, but I'm not sure that restriction won't be overcome at some point. They are safe this time around anyway. Kobolds are also excluded because they can't speak an intelligible language (I haven't resolved their deal with positions in general, compared to goblins).
Toady I am noticing that once an army is defeated the town is pretty much overtaken. Will towns ever "Resist" occupation themselves? For example if a great Ex-Adventurer was there could he jump in after the army was defeated and just kill all the attackers? Do they currently resist occupation beyond just running away or turn coating MUCH later?
Hmm why am I asking this question? I am sure towns will do it eventually especially if they have a powerful populous.
Yeah, they need a stronger notion of identity. The individuals retain their previous affiliation, but the entity no longer gets a world gen turn to think about collective decisions. It just needs to be written in at some point. It's also possible the individual leader AI rewrites for sieges will lead to more along these lines if important conquered critters keep turns. There are too many critters to give them all individual thought turns every year in general.
Toady, is [POWER] a caste level tag? I.e. can we have some species where one caste can take over the goblins, but another can't?
Yeah, it's a caste tag.
How will the random creatures and titans work with custom creature graphics? Obviously we can't have graphics for all of them, but having some predefined groups would help.
I'm thinking about the old Starflight game and the way it handled graphics for random creatures. There were groups like "bipedal", "quadrupedal" etc. end each had its own sprite.
It isn't handled right now. We could use the creature classes I guess. There will be things like "mammal" and "humanoid" eventually, as strings, and it could go by the number of matches or something.
I am starting to notice a similarity between Titans, Forgotten Beasts, and Demons. I hope Toady will work on their appearances so that visually they will tend to look distinct.
Yeah, Gulsheb the "towering, bloated one-eyed thrush" was definitely not a demon per se. Nor are demons randomly generated creatures, as far as we've heard.
There are quite a few differences (the nastiest alterations and forms are reserved and common for demons and evil beasts, and the intelligent mannerisms are reserved for demons who are also more commonly humanoid), but yeah, there's a lot of overlap, especially because the creature generator is mostly animal-based to punt a lot of the hard work to real-world knowledge until we can get more time in on it.
The actual description had "thrush twisted into humanoid form" which is required right now for all intelligent demons. So you can imagine something reasonably humanish, just disgusting. The "demon" from the raws is out, but the ones taking its roles will still be like it in overall human shape (they could have four arms or a tail or whatever though).
Author
Topic: Future of the Fortress: List of Remaining Items (Read 3663024 times)