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[Areyar]

personally I don't think this concept of smithing souls could be an industrial commonplace process, rather how artefacts are created: rarely and randomly:


McMurdock has become possessed!
McMurdock has claimed a forge!
McMurdock "smith" screams: "I need a pure soul!"
Asraii "muttonface the elf of ages" Ba Booblydum has been slain.
McMurdock has created a wondrous artifact, Orichalcum - the puddle of Elves.

[warlordzephyr]

does toady have a team? It looks like he needs one.

[Jakkarra]

personally I don't think this concept of smithing souls could be an industrial commonplace process, rather how artefacts are created: rarely and randomly:


McMurdock has become possessed!
McMurdock has claimed a forge!
McMurdock "smith" screams: "I need a pure soul!"
Asraii "muttonface the elf of ages" Ba Booblydum has been slain.
McMurdock has created a wondrous artifact, Orichalcum - the puddle of Elves.

ive highlighted two conflicting instances for you mate,

love, jakkarra

[Great Cthulhu]

Toady, I know you're not interested in user submissions in general, but how do you feel about users contributing to boring stuff in the raws? I'm thinking about non-controversial stuff like [SPEC_HEAT], [MELTING_POINT], [BOILING_POINT], [SOLID_DENSITY], or [VERMIN_NOTRAP] tags for creatures such as mussels.

It seems to me that stuff like that would be rather boring and time-consuming for you to do, while the community could have it done in no time at all.

If the community would arrive at a consensus-backed mod filling in these kinds of blanks in the raws, would you consider adding it to "mainline" DF?

Disclaimer: I've made a mod that adds melting and boiling points to stones (see sig), so I'm not entirely impartial.

Edit: grammar.

[LegacyCWAL]

personally I don't think this concept of smithing souls could be an industrial commonplace process, rather how artefacts are created: rarely and randomly:


McMurdock has become possessed!
McMurdock has claimed a forge!
McMurdock "smith" screams: "I need a pure soul!"
Asraii "muttonface the elf of ages" Ba Booblydum has been slain.
McMurdock has created a wondrous artifact, Orichalcum - the puddle of Elves.

ive highlighted two conflicting instances for you mate,

love, jakkarra

Pure evil is technically still pure...

[Jakkarra]

personally I don't think this concept of smithing souls could be an industrial commonplace process, rather how artefacts are created: rarely and randomly:


McMurdock has become possessed!
McMurdock has claimed a forge!
McMurdock "smith" screams: "I need a pure soul!"
Asraii "muttonface the elf of ages" Ba Booblydum has been slain.
McMurdock has created a wondrous artifact, Orichalcum - the puddle of Elves.

ive highlighted two conflicting instances for you mate,

love, jakkarra

Pure evil is technically still pure...

but they arent even pure evil! they are so incomsistent!

one minute they are asking for some crafts, then buggering off because theres a bit of wood-dust stuck to the craft, then declaring war because i cut some trees down, eating the poor bastard outside when the elves came (was a peasant, no skillz, and was fairly injured from a unicorn, otherwise the elves would have been paste) and THEN they "fall" into a specially made one-inch-deep pit of magma.

they've been smoking a bit too much sap. methinks.

love, jakkarra

[Dwarfu]

On squads:

With the removal of squad info from individual dwarfs and into more of a squad-based entity, has it been considered to have standing squad formations instead of just assigning each new squad member to a squad?

To clarify, I create a squad, designate it to contain 3 sworddwarfs and 2 crossbowdwarfs.  I create another squad of 5 axedwarfs.  During battle, a sworddwarf and an axedwarf perish.  The next soldier I make is a sworddwarf.  The game should know that the new soldier should be assigned to the first available squat and 'slot' that fits the soldier's makeup, in this case squad 1, as the new soldier is a sworddwarf and there is a 'slot' open in that squad.

Or do you think people will want more individual control over the exact dwarf going into an exact 'slot' in an exact squad?  Me, I'm all for the automated assignments, perhaps with the option to reassign them later.

[SirHoneyBadger]

Toady, I know you're not interested in user submissions in general, but how do you feel about users contributing to boring stuff in the raws? I'm thinking about non-controversial stuff like [SPEC_HEAT], [MELTING_POINT], [BOILING_POINT], [SOLID_DENSITY], or [VERMIN_NOTRAP] tags for creatures such as mussels.

It seems to me that stuff like that would be rather boring and time-consuming for you to do, while the community could have it done in no time at all.

If the community would arrive at a consensus-backed mod filling in these kinds of blanks in the raws, would you consider adding it to "mainline" DF?

Disclaimer: I've made a mod that adds melting and boiling points to stones (see sig), so I'm not entirely impartial.

Edit: grammar.

The nice thing about this is: if the community can come to a concensus, we don't need Toady's official approval to use a given Mod. We can just download it and use it, no permission required. It'd be nice to have an "officially sanctioned Mod", but it's really just an ego thing.

[SirPenguin]

I'm going through dev_note update withdrawal...needs more updates!

[Zironic]

[pulls out a gun]

All right man, just give me an update, just one man, JUST ONE

[itches neck - eyes red from staring at dev_log]

GIVE ME IT

[Great Cthulhu]

The nice thing about this is: if the community can come to a concensus, we don't need Toady's official approval to use a given Mod. We can just download it and use it, no permission required. It'd be nice to have an "officially sanctioned Mod", but it's really just an ego thing.

No, not really. Sure, the ego thing's nice too, but there are two clear advantages to having it in mainline.

1) Once it's in the mainline, there'll be no need to keep producing versions of the mod for new versions of DF that have changes in the raws.
2) Toady can depend on this data being there. Going by the Dark Diamond interview, Toady likes to add lots of data and systems to the DF world that he may not use at that time, just so they may turn into something interesting or helpful later on. Tags like SPEC_HEAT and such seem like such a thing, but they're not used everywhere. I'm guessing that's not because Toady wouldn't like them to be used, but rather because it's a lot of boring work to find all the right numbers.

To clarify: this isn't for adding stuff that most of the community seems to enjoy, such as the orcs mod. Instead it's about doing the legwork of filling in the blanks that Toady left in the raws.

Edit to clarify further: by mainlining, I don't mean officially endorsing the mod. Rather, I mean that the content of the mod is incorporated into the next version of DF. And really, the mod is just a convenient means of getting the data to Toady. It could just as well be a spreadsheet or whatever. Sorry if that was unclear.

[SirHoneyBadger]

"It's about doing the legwork of filling in the blanks that Toady left in the raws."

Which can, once again, be done without ever involving Toady.

For one thing, once all that dull work is actually completed and gathered into a nice little package, it's likely to be a whole lot more convincing of whatever it is you're trying to convince us of, than a "hey guys, let's all do so-and-so" scenario, which-statistically speaking-is probably never going to get off the ground, anyway.

For another, Toady doesn't seem to have any desire, whatsoever, for anyone else to "help" with his project, in any official capacity. Ever. Period. Who says he'll ever fill in the blanks for us? Or that he even has a stake in having them filled?

Thirdly: If he wants help, he's more than capable of asking for it--and has, with other aspects of the game, such as bug-hunting.

A fourth reason is, quite simply, by leaving all those blanks unfilled, he's giving the Modding community an impetus to do something about it, if the desire to do it is there. And not just one, "official" thing, but as many different takes and versions of it that we can come up with. Which increases the entertainment of the game, atleast for some people.

I agree with what you're saying--that those blanks should be filled, that all that boring but important legwork should be done, but I don't agree that it requires some sort of community blood-drive to do it.

Take a look at my mod sometime. You'll see...I dunno, a couple hundred different types of new vermin that I'm working on adding to the game. By the time I'm done, it'll probably be close to a thousand. None of it's official, most of it's pretty damn dull, and every bit of it was made to entertain myself, not the community. I like doing it, and I don't need permission to do it. Filling all those blanks-my way, and my way alone-is my entertainment.

If you really want to help with that kind of project, feel free to help me out with my mod. You can start right now by checking what I've got for typos and posting ideas, and I'll give you full credit for your work. Or you could help research medicine/surgery stuff. Just send me a PM, and I'll happily put you to work on that.   

[Sean Mirrsen]

All we really need is for me to get my hind end in gear and get the Fort Knox project to reasonably complete levels. Then anyone can choose to have as much of the game modded as he wants, and lots of different people can collaborate without having to track each others' progress. Modbase has shown that the idea has chasmloads of potential, it just needs to be completed and made user-friendly.

[Great Cthulhu]

Um, SirHoneyBadger, I'm not sure where your hostility comes from. I am already doing some of this legwork, as I mentioned in my first post on this issue. Also, I'm not trying to convince anyone. I'm asking Toady if he would like this, because I think that he might based on what I know of his reasons for accepting help on some things (such as the OpenGL code), but not on other things. If he doesn't care for it, then that's the end of it. Simple as that.

Edit: apologies if you intended no hostility. It's difficult to interpreted these things without body language etc.

[Tormy]

"It's about doing the legwork of filling in the blanks that Toady left in the raws."

Which can, once again, be done without ever involving Toady.

For one thing, once all that dull work is actually completed and gathered into a nice little package, it's likely to be a whole lot more convincing of whatever it is you're trying to convince us of, than a "hey guys, let's all do so-and-so" scenario, which-statistically speaking-is probably never going to get off the ground, anyway.

For another, Toady doesn't seem to have any desire, whatsoever, for anyone else to "help" with his project, in any official capacity. Ever. Period. Who says he'll ever fill in the blanks for us? Or that he even has a stake in having them filled?

Thirdly: If he wants help, he's more than capable of asking for it--and has, with other aspects of the game, such as bug-hunting.

A fourth reason is, quite simply, by leaving all those blanks unfilled, he's giving the Modding community an impetus to do something about it, if the desire to do it is there. And not just one, "official" thing, but as many different takes and versions of it that we can come up with. Which increases the entertainment of the game, atleast for some people.

I agree with what you're saying--that those blanks should be filled, that all that boring but important legwork should be done, but I don't agree that it requires some sort of community blood-drive to do it.

I agree. We don't need any "official mods". In fact what the hell? It sounds weird and makes no sense... 
Toady will "fill in those holes" if it will be necessary.