This I'm not sure about. My guess is no, though -- contact area alone isn't enough to go on, since it doesn't tell you about the shape of the weapon (for example, a long thin string would be easy to hit with despite the very small contact area).
I wonder what happens if you mod in large-surfaced weapons, whether it'll realize that contact area should be the smaller of the creature and weapon, a flyswatter for instance. I don't THINK megabeasts are presently large enough to do this to dwarfs, but they certainly could to, say, rats.
One complication is that, no matter how big or small a creature is, a weapon will only make contact on one major body part (i.e. not SMALL/INTERNAL or whatever). There's no notion of a full-body impact yet (aside from fall damage I guess). But yeah, I was wondering about this too -- hopefully it at least does a min(x, y) thing.
It does condensate if it has boiling temp. But iirc. it condensates into globs or dust so you would be actually coated into dust not a solid material.
Nope, condensation doesn't occur at all, unfortunately:
Vapors don't condense around items or walls or anything, if I remember. I don't think a liquid would even work here, since an item that lands in a square with spatter doesn't automatically gain that spatter as a contaminant. It's pretty difficult to get a contaminant on an item right now if you don't jam them into something or have them around a combat in somebody's inventory where goop/blood is flying around.
Another question: Will we be able to make custom buildable items, like beds or doors, or are we just limited to workshops? Or can we just hack together a 1x1 workshop that tries to fill the same job as we wanted?
The "build items" for custom buildings can include anything that can be specified via reagent syntax (plus a few extra options), so you could create a bed building or door building. However, it wouldn't actually function as a bed or door. Reaction jobs are the main thing you can do with workshops, although I suppose you could also have a custom "wall" or "road" building.
It's possible that dwarves can admire items built into custom buildings, but I'm not sure.
Can Vermin still be produced by reactions or itemcorpses? (I'm actually guessing they can't...)
I don't see why that would have changed. Vermin should still be semi-items.
Yeah, you can still produce vermin that way.
Can creatures "secrete" vermin, as they might produce poison or another substance from their skin? (Worth asking but..)
Seems unlikely. We'll probably have to wait for "item breaths" for something like that.
Yup. You can customize the materials used by secretions/breath, but not the item types (secretions are hardcoded to produce a material covering/spatter on the creature, breath uses material clouds or glob items).
The music thing has come up before. I don't have a quote, but I do specifically remember him wanting to do more of it himself - and only himself. It was a good while ago, so perhaps things have changed (there was, after all, the advent of the podcast music). But it's probably safe to assume not unless we hear otherwise.
You remember correctly:
This is really something I like to do by myself. I can't preview anything either, since it won't come together decently until the songs aare written.
For me, the key question is whether or not the magma will be limitless. While pools are enough for a smelting operation, if there are no pipes down there magma moats and other fun are out. So it's not about the ease of obtaining the magma. Legions of flaming clowns are !!Fun!!... but if it's just a series of magma pools down there, I may want to embark with a surface pipe anyway.
It's been heavily hinted that there are magma
seas down below, ones that replenish from off-map. Should be limitless enough for anyone.