Ill skip my questions... I can't word it correctly. It was about how Toady thinks he can balance the freedom he gives to the players and the overall dwarven image as well as the amount of content he will need in the game overall. Which seems to come up in the question of Mounts and Poisons.
I think one idea we've been idlely pointing at is to make every action the player can take the responsibility of some appointed dwarf or dwarves, so that you could do more of the things that you want to do, but there'd also always be somebody to blame. This would also allow some of the more "mind control" things I'm uncomfortable with, but it would cause a direct interaction between the appointed dwarf (manager, say) and the "controlled" dwarf, which would either lead to no problems or a fist fight or refusal to perform the task, depending on the task. That's the guiding idea, even if you don't see it very much and maybe I'll never get there.
... how will this affect the soldiers' families? Will the soldier still claim a room while they are marked to sleep in the barracks?
... if the soldiers/guards are set to 'off duty' in the rotation, will they then go visit their families, sleep in their own rooms, make babies, etc?
... are the stands and racks going to count as owned items, and if so, are nobles going to get negative thoughts if some yokel in the armory has a better one than the noble does?
... will assigning more than one barracks (such as on different levels) confuse everyone?
We'll have to see on a lot of these, as we haven't worked out the details. For the last, you'll be able to have several places without trouble, as the squads will only accept one assignment each, I think.
Can wounds heal while they have something stuck in them?
I suspect the answer is "the wound doesn't close fully as long as something is in it". And I think it was mentioned at some point that stuck-ins are attached to wounds.
Yeah, that's right. I'm not sure they heal at all, but they'll probably stop bleeding, if I remember.
Goblin roads run underground. Is it possible that they would use the shoreline of underground rivers for foot traffic as well?
how are these world-spanning layers going to affect the current dwarven tunnels?
I'm pretty sure the current dwarven tunnels are purely cosmetic -- I don't think they're used even by migrants, which are I think the only groups that actually move on the world map.
The tunnels currently (attempt to) bridge things like chasms, so the feature interactions here should be similar, though it's unclear of course what I'll manage. If a tunnel hits an open cavern and then re-emerges, they should just brave the cavern, unless it's a bad area, then they should wall it off and try again. But yeah, stuff is pretty cosmetic now, except for adv mode. We'll get there with the release after this one most likely, as that will have armies moving around.
I'm more curious about this world-spanning underground-layer ability. Will adventurers be able to get down there and roam around? Preferably with fast-travel, unlike the current tunnels?
You'll be able to get down there. I'm ambivalent about fast travel -- clearly, something is needed, since it takes a long, long time to move around. However, most of the feeling of discovery and exploration and some of the feeling of lurking danger is lost by allowing fast travel in places like that. There are some tentative solutions, I guess, like allowing fast travel in areas that have been explored or at least talked about, or change how the travel screen looks underground to make it look more intimate, but we haven't thought it through yet.
hfs stuff
HFS will be updated, indeed.
Toady, what are your thoughts in regards to underground critters breaching into forts and the like?
You mean that tunneling discussion over which much blood has been shed in various suggestion threads? The official view, I guess, is that for such a contentious issue, it should be initable -- our default init option is to allow a variety of tunneling in both sieges and from underground, but that it be relative infrequent and sensible when it occurs, rather than having a pack of giant moles that can just walk through the walls leaving a destructive trail of floors as you might get in a roguelike for example, as slow tunneling fits the strategic pace and "realism".
you mentioned giving materials ID numbers for the "whose blood is in this vial" stuff. Will the next version track the, uh, original owner of all materials from "significant" creatures? Will it show up in item descriptions?
All blood etc. is currently associated to specific hist figs, yeah. I don't remember if I blocked it out in item descriptions or not... there are reasons to do it either way. You shouldn't just know whose blood that is, unless, for example, you saw it splatter there. You probably shouldn't even know what type of creature, as it is currently, but it might have to give you that without further information linking related blood types together (I guess color is enough, mostly).
Those caves are pretty damn big. I hope there will be a worldgen setting to adjust their size.
I'm only concerned that they probably shouldn't be so open everywhere in the world.
I just wish there were more narrow passageways instead of just huge open spaces just for the sake of variation. A few chasms here and there would be neat too.
Yeah, there will be settings for this, and I haven't done vertical connections yet, which should yield some traversable chasm-style structures. This was just an example, and one that showed that features can be less "missable" this time around. It's currently quite difficult to find cave features without using a utility like reveal, and especially hard without even using the site finder, because you could very well select an area with nothing. With proper parameters, the presence of features can now be a foregone conclusion, and you won't have to spoil the types you are getting and just play as if you are going to confidently bump into one eventually while at the same time maintaining exact control of your overland embark location, if that's how you want to play it.
It would be cool if undergrounders warred with each other as well, and vied for control of territory. You know, something like scattered tribes of gremlins being wiped out one by one by a spirit of fire commanding an army of magma men. I doubt the current territory stuff is Z-flexible, but maybe later.
Yeah, this time around we want to have some basic entities down there, which will give the underground animal peoples their mounts and weapons back. Territory might have to wait though, yeah, but it's a ~6x increase the way things are currently set up (with 5 layers), so it's not impossible, as the current territory tracking isn't a huge burden.
I wonder if there will be caves or natural openings to the surface that will give access to these things.
Almost the entire "Sites" section in the List of Remaining Items in the first post of this thread covers how caves will interact with these layers. Cave sites might become no more than a vertical access point into these underground layers, in terms of map generation, plus any digging cave critters like antmen or kobolds etc. might do.
Can we expect some of the new cave systems to follow their geological tendencies - for instance high drainage areas over limestone? Perhaps something like the caverns and watering holes throughout the Yucatan peninsula.
Most likely not at this point. The principal goal of this underground update is to improve the fortress progression and adventure mode at a structural level, independent of atmosphere considerations (which are important but can't come first chronologically). The options to pare down the layers into something less than those screenshots will likely just reduce the amount without respecting geology. Later, quite likely, geology will become more respected under those settings. It could also be respected to a lesser degree at higher frequency settings by influencing the type of layer rather than the presence of a layer. I like approximating geology correctly so it's something I'm mindful of, but first we need some framework, exploration and conflict.
What's up with the wagon in the first screenshot? Do different types of wood have different colours now?
It could be a feather tree wagon, since I've been playing on smaller worlds that tend to have clumps of good and evil. I've had purple wagons from glumprongs as well. So yeah, the wood colors carry over now. Most everything has a proper material definition. The ~ in the picture is also a pet worm, I think, as those settings are currently bugged, and all the cats and dogs flash because they are missing their legs. Easy bugs, so I've just let them sit.
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Topic: Future of the Fortress: List of Remaining Items (Read 3627433 times)