About the Underground Stuff - obviously you can't give details yet, but will these special features rely on a lot of built in coding like the Pits do now? Will there be any provision for modders in that regard, or is it not possible to alter that sort of thing from our end?
I think some stuff is going to come out, but there will still be quite a bit of hard-coding. Things like antmen nests (one of the few things I've mentioned in posts) will definitely need a lot of interaction with the raws. Quite a bit of this will be experimental (not implying odd or even that new, just that much of it will be like the standard features, but done in a new way code-wise), so that'll very likely remain hard-coded until I feel good enough about the syntax to come up with a raw format for it. When I start making tie-ins to the random sphere regions and so on, which'll eventually be important for how the underground plays out, I really don't know which way things will go, as the notions behind spheres are fundamental yet involved, which is the sort of thing coding is better at, (not saying that raw derived/custom spheres are out, of course). Like personality facets and attributes, it's much easier to sprinkle effects throughout the code without worrying about mimicking that behavior back in the txt file.
How about something similar to the waterwell, but allowing a single dwarf to descend/ascend with bucket?
It's almost irresistably cute, but that sort of thing will likely have to wait until I make another push on mechanisms. Last I checked, that was doing pretty well in the suggestion voting, so we might see something there on the release after this next one, though it'd be too premature to commit now.
I wonder what 'update guards' is about?
Most of the ones with "update" in front just mean that some underlying stuff has changed (in this case, the different guard notions have been brought out into the raws), and the behaviors that were already in the game need to be made to work again.
Will the units actually USE [weapon racks and armor stands]? Hanging up their gear and switching to civilian clothing while of duty or what?
That's the idea, yeah. Having their own stands should significantly cut down on the wandering around.
Undead se_V_ers.
He he he, I missed the whole sewers thing. I thought you were just demonstrating that you can sever part of the word "sever" with its own "V" as a stand-alone point.
I read it as having necrotic venoms, which are really hideous.
Yeah, that's what we meant... some months back, Threetoe and I happened upon the Discovery channel "series" (it has like 2 episodes) "I Was Bitten". It was trashy, of course, but it was also thoroughly disgustingly graphic and therefore inspiring for the game.
Actually, incorporation of the undead is going to take some thinking. Are skeletons going to have the tissues of the base creature flayed to the second last layer to make skeletons, for example? Then exoskeletal creatures would just end up being jelly, so maybe there would have to be a [ROT] tag for materials indicating that it will decay for the purposes of being undead.
Yeah this part is more or less done. For zombies, it just rots the same tissues that are flagged as rottable for regular rotting, and for skeletons I believe it removes the rottables completely and drops off any part that is no longer connected after that process is completely. I think there's some sort of CANNOT_UNDEAD tag for creatures that shouldn't, but I've probably forgotten it everywhere.
Combat reports are too spammy for me, but I'm glad everyone else might end up getting them
I wasn't planning to blast out every single line of adv mode text at the bottom of the screen, at least. I think ideally it would be able to decide where the battles are or link the announcements to a given conflict between two or more creatures and then let you expand out saved text for that... maybe with some sort of zoomable report marker that could be used for other things as well. I haven't settled on a system. You should be able to know when your critters are fighting and then see what has been/is going on in detail if you like. That's the basic goal.
I'm curious to know what [the thing about easy to find features] entails. Hidden features as they stand now, underground rivers, lakes, magma pipes and pools, chasms and what not are pretty hard to get all on a single compact map as it stands now
Well,the biggest difference will be that features can overlap at different levels.
Yeah, it's easier to cram things in when you are free of the one-per-(x,y)-coordinate restriction. I was worried a bit about the limited Z levels, but I think the recent 15-or-so-deep HFS releases have alleviated that somewhat. I can make things lower, a bit, but there's plenty of room within several slices that boxing you in on several sides and given you several large layers of wholesome mystery below shouldn't be too restrictive.
That said, this was also one of those world gen param thingies... some people wanted hidden out-of-place civilizations at every turn, some people wanted something that felt like 2D, some people wanted *something* as long as there was something, and I'm sure there are a few quiet people out there that just want to dig in the rock and not be bothered by weird crap at all with the possible exception of a few outside threats. I'm going to try to keep it versatile.
I was wondering, though, Toady: Are there any plans in the near future to fix the issue of dwarves (especially military) leaving their clothes all over the place? I know you've probably been asked before, but I can't recall. And what about wrestling experience? I have no personal experience to back that up, but I've been hearing that in recent versions, wrestling gives out way too much EXP.
I'm hoping the equipment part will be handled by their standing-down and training equipment behaviors, so they can just try to keep their crap together both during their downtime and after practices where it's likely to have gotten screwed up, but it'll be hard to guarantee specifics. I know wrestling is particularly annoying now... and it's way too easy to just rip somebody's pants off.
Under "Personality effects on training", I had a note about skill gain speeds, so I'm at least going to check it out when I work on that. We'll have to see if there are any practical changes. I'll put an additional note for a wrestling check.
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Topic: Future of the Fortress: List of Remaining Items (Read 3663746 times)