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[sonerohi]

I read the dev-log. I've been shooting rainbows from my mouth since and Optimus Prime just transformed into a unicorn next to me.

[Sysice]

I squeed. I never squee.

[smjjames]

And a random-ish question, how did you do the dwarf/elf/etc. language stuff? Did you sit down and just translate every word in the dictionary to dwarfish? Or did you have a program randomly put together words?

I think he used a word generator (theres one over on the modding section, or at least a link to one) and checked for any real words or any bad language (as in words that are spelled the same as a bad word in dwarfish or english, he did make them translate into naughty words, but thats different). I know he answered a similar question to this a while back, but no idea where it is.

[Dakk]

Aye, the new position stuff and megabeasts are putting DF one step closer to being the fantasy world simulator we all look forward to.

[Footkerchief]

Huh, so I guess the thrush was a demon after all, insofar as those categories still make sense.

I'm curious why the "Update guards" part of Entity Positions is going to be difficult.  I have an inkling that they might be muddled with regard to unit type vs. entity position, maybe along with thieves?  I guess we'll probably hear about it in the dev log soon.

wow... just -wow
is there a form of limited randomisation or large scale individual appearance?
For example, having a race of creatures that all have humanoid 2 arms and 2 legs and head, but number/size of fingers and toes, length or nonexistence of tail etc -randomized without distinction of caste?

Once again it's necessary to distinguish between the creatures that are wholly randomly generated and the randomized appearance variables that stock creatures like dwarves possess.  The randomly generated creatures are each unique (as far as we've heard) and don't reproduce, so they don't have a race to vary from per se.  As for randomized appearances, you can describe an aspect of the creature with randomized hardcoded adjectives, although these do not change the body part in any combat-relevant sense, and in fact don't seem attached to a particular body part at all.  So you could have a race of creatures that are described as having variously "long" or "short" tails, but the game won't increase the body part size accordingly, nor will it change the adjective to accomodate a time-based growth or shrinkage of the body part.  You can't have a random number of limbs or fingers.

Well, now that you mention it, I can think of a few.  A creature's Wounds screen (preferably beat up enough to show off the detail), whatever the set-up screen for the Arena function is, whatever screen lets you see the appearance of a Demon or other such supercreature, and the custom workshop interface.  I'd ask to see the caverns and underground stuff too, but I know you want that to be a surprise and I don't imagine the basic cavern has changed much since that one screenshot you posted way back when.  No hurry of course.

I'm also curious about the medical overview screen.  I would recommend, though, that these screenshots be held in reserve in case of another dry stretch of development before the release.

I've had this question for a few days, but I've held off asking it. Until now. Is there a tag to randomise the associated spheres of a creature? And if there isn't, is it possible for you to implement one before the next release?

The randomized creature generator is hardcoded -- it creates tags for creatures, it doesn't interpret them.  Additionally, spheres are a quality of a race, like being nocturnal or a carnivore, not a quality of an individual creature, like personality.  That's very unlikely to change soon, since even moving the sphere associations to the caste level would have been difficult: "The number of tokens that are creature rather than caste specific is very small.  Creatures handle ... sphere information (not sure how long that'll last, but there were annoyances)."

Will we be able to breed animals for use as mounts? I'd love to make a croc farm and have an army of crocodile riders.

Dwarves won't do anything with mounts in Fortress Mode yet.  You can breed crocs, but they won't ride them.  It's coming later.

And a random-ish question, how did you do the dwarf/elf/etc. language stuff? Did you sit down and just translate every word in the dictionary to dwarfish? Or did you have a program randomly put together words?

This is vintage info from before DF's first release, but it's probably still true:

My general policy before has been to use random names for things.  All the individual creatures have them (except for deer, etc.), in 4 different languages (humans, elves, dwarves and goblins).  Pets of a creature are named in that creatures language.  Rather than the weird names from Armok, I'm using syllables that mean things and gluing them together, then I display the name with the translation.  Sort of Tolkie again, but I'm not using his languages.

Incidentally, the remainder of the above post contains an admission that the current (and now obsolete?) demons are essentially Balrogs, for anyone who couldn't tell.

[Willfor]

I've had this question for a few days, but I've held off asking it. Until now. Is there a tag to randomise the associated spheres of a creature? And if there isn't, is it possible for you to implement one before the next release?

The randomized creature generator is hardcoded -- it creates tags for creatures, it doesn't interpret them.  Additionally, spheres are a quality of a race, like being nocturnal or a carnivore, not a quality of an individual creature, like personality.  That's very unlikely to change soon, since even moving the sphere associations to the caste level would have been difficult: "The number of tokens that are creature rather than caste specific is very small.  Creatures handle ... sphere information (not sure how long that'll last, but there were annoyances)."

Damn. I was hoping to have something impersonating a god that wasn't a horribly evil monster and/or associated with deformity, but I suppose that will have to wait.

[Hummingbird]

Hmm.  So far almost all of the non-megabeast leaders, even goblins, have befriended animals at some point in their lives.

Is wandering off into the wilderness to tame animals something that all leaders are going to do?

Also, about the tale of the cyclopean thrush:

Is there a chance that a megabeast will fail at tricking humans into giving it rulership over them?  Also, if the humans have already accepted a megabeast as a ruler, is there a chance that they will realize that the megabeast is not in fact a god and try to overthrow it?

Also also:

Will a megabeast taking control of a civ thereafter act only with the interests of the civ in mind, or will it continue to have independent ulterior motives?

edit: I can hazzing teh grammars.

[Demonic Gophers]

I've had this question for a few days, but I've held off asking it. Until now. Is there a tag to randomise the associated spheres of a creature? And if there isn't, is it possible for you to implement one before the next release?

The randomized creature generator is hardcoded -- it creates tags for creatures, it doesn't interpret them.  Additionally, spheres are a quality of a race, like being nocturnal or a carnivore, not a quality of an individual creature, like personality.  That's very unlikely to change soon, since even moving the sphere associations to the caste level would have been difficult: "The number of tokens that are creature rather than caste specific is very small.  Creatures handle ... sphere information (not sure how long that'll last, but there were annoyances)."

Damn. I was hoping to have something impersonating a god that wasn't a horribly evil monster and/or associated with deformity, but I suppose that will have to wait.

You could mod in POWER megabeasts with positive Spheres.

[CobaltKobold]

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.

Deliciously ominous.

That might be a good time to start randomizing the metaphysics

Only Toady...

You can't have a random number of limbs or fingers.

My father was slaughtered by a six-fingered man...

Count Rugen will have to wait, I guess.

[Neonivek]

Hmm.  So far almost all of the non-megabeast leaders, even goblins, have befriended animals at some point in their lives.

Is wandering off into the wilderness to tame animals something that all leaders are going to do?

Also, about the tale of the cyclopean thrush:

Is there a chance that a megabeast will fail at tricking humans into giving it rulership over them?  Also, if the humans have already accepted a megabeast as a ruler, is there a chance that they will realize that the megabeast is not in fact a god and try to overthrow it?

Also also:

Will a megabeast taking control of a civ thereafter act only with the interests of the civ in mind, or will it continue to have independent ulterior motives?

edit: I can hazzing teh grammars.

1) No not all leaders are going to tame. Toady was just giving an exceptional examples of what could happen in game.

2) Megabeasts don't try to trick people into worship. Powers do.

3) I don't think Toady is at the "Personal goals" section yet. For the most part I think they are mostly indoctrinated into the society once they take it over.

Once again I am mostly guessing.

Toady how far are we from having military or groups (like guards or adventurers) mobilise against (Semi)Megabeasts rather then individual duels if ever during World Generation? Was it done for balance reasons? Is that how it currently works but it just doesn't report every attacker going up against the megabeast?

Should I be asking these questions? They are starting to sound more like criticism

[Dakk]

Oh yea, me has a question:

Toady, would it be possible to improve "normal" wrestling (choosing close combat on combat preferences) by stopping it from grabbing fingers and other currently useless parts and make them only accessible through the wrestling screen? Its just its a bit annoying to have to target all your blows when you just can't afford losing turns by trusting on close combat and seeing your adventurer randomly grabbing fingers and stuff. A more amusing option would be allowing these parts to be broken through wrestling, but yea, just a minor thing. You might want to put this off for now since there's still major stuff to be worked on.

[Footkerchief]

Oh yea, me has a question:

Toady, would it be possible to improve "normal" wrestling (choosing close combat on combat preferences) by stopping it from grabbing fingers and other currently useless parts and make them only accessible through the wrestling screen? Its just its a bit annoying to have to target all your blows when you just can't afford losing turns by trusting on close combat and seeing your adventurer randomly grabbing fingers and stuff. A more amusing option would be allowing these parts to be broken through wrestling, but yea, just a minor thing. You might want to put this off for now since there's still major stuff to be worked on.

It's going to get put off for sure.  Wrestling in general has a ton of problems and gaps, and he'll probably do a bunch of work on it at once later.

[ToonyMan]

I read the dev-log. I've been shooting rainbows from my mouth since and Optimus Prime just transformed into a unicorn next to me.

*goes to Dev Log*

Woah.  That's a lot of text.  Time to get reading.

11/04/2009 - Oh, that's pretty cool.  Elves just got a boost in awesome.

11/05/2009 - Oh armok that's awesome.  "Goddess of Deformity"?  Classic!

11/06/2009 - "A shambling mound of vomit vaguely resembling a walking frog, it was Vim Forkedmarshes the Profane Nadir, mistress of torture and misery, emerged from the underworld."  Just, wow.  That.  Wow.

[Neonivek]

Hmmm I have a question for Toady but it is closer to a suggestion but I am not sure.

Question for Toady in Spoilers

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Toady from what I read the deeper you travel down to the earth the more difficult your encounters become as the presence of the HFS starts to corrupt the surroundings. Do you have plans to make Spheres from Spherical lands, Sphere specific Creatures, and/or HFS have active corrupting influence over other existing creatures either in history time or especially real time? Like a Adventurer going insane (or mutating) from his travels in hell or a Civilisation of Savants due to their distance from the lands of wisdom? As opposed to doing this all from year 1 of World Gen

Mostly it reminds me of this old Japanese thing that I never quite understood. Killing 1000, or is it 100?, demons apperantly turns you into one. Which could be an interesting concequence of constantly bathing in daemonic/Titanic blood

[PTTG??]

I haven't taken a look at any of the devlogs or such...

I just wanted to give you a nickname; Alabama Pi.
Also, I've totally had to empty out buckets of rainbows over here.