Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Mel_Vixen]

Well a little bit gaming and Story-telling theory: The more things you rename in one or another way the less understandable becomes your Story to the reader/player. A extreme example would be "A borgly borgle borgles his borgle around."

If toady writes "Bunny-man" or maybe "Fox-man" everyone understands that a anthropomorphic Animal is meant. If he would write "Usagi" or "Kitzune" (the Bunny- and Fox-people from japanese Myth) most people would plainly think "wtf? what are these things?".

You could thought include these Race-names in language files for example so your cat-people call themselfs "Basts".

Also i wouldnt call them Moreau-ian creatures as long we dont get more about their origin from threetoe. DF's Animalman dont show any form of degeneration in comparsion to the "Moreau-ian creatures" they even develop weapons in the next version.
And hey with magics i wouldnt be surprised if some elven druids, human shamans or whatever morphed by free will in Animal-men.

[Tenebrais]

If toady writes "Bunny-man" or maybe "Fox-man" everyone understands that a anthropomorphic Animal is meant. If he would write "Usagi" or "Kitzune" (the Bunny- and Fox-people from japanese Myth) most people would plainly think "wtf? what are these things?".

Thing is, we already have creatures that most people won't recognise, like the ettin or the foul blendec, or the nightwing. There's even some lesser-known real creatures, like the coelacanth, or the bilou. Heck, I didn't know what a Rhesus Macaque was when I first saw them.
Besides, descriptive paragraphs could be able to allow you to identify most of these creatures.

[Leafsnail]

Thing is, we already have creatures that most people won't recognise, like the ettin or the foul blendec, or the nightwing. There's even some lesser-known real creatures, like the coelacanth, or the bilou. Heck, I didn't know what a Rhesus Macaque was when I first saw them.
Besides, descriptive paragraphs could be able to allow you to identify most of these creatures.

Sounds good, optional descriptive paragraphs could be useful for unidentified creatures.

Incidentally, are there any plans to make item descriptions more useful?  We currently get "This is a <insert item name here>" which isn't all that useful.  Could uses possibly be added (like they already are for stones)?

[Reyyvo]

should magma just be like a layer way down beneath hundreds of z-levels, and some areas have varying magma depth (e.g. near a volcano would be shallow depth to the magma, the thickest part of a tectonic plate would be the highest depth)? Living that far underground would also be exceptionally dwarfy, so i dont think people should complain

[Armok]

Hmm, Toady, have you ever planed on making the languages procedural as well, so that there will always be words for creatures (even modded and *spoiler* ones), body parts, other randomly generated things not suitable for compound names, etc.? As far as i understood it you have some sort of program that generated the words anyway, and the work whit adding new ones is determining the grammar (which is the same for most creatures, or other things of a single kind), and filtering out accidental profanity, and making sure there are no duplicates. So it shouldn't be TO hard?

[G-Flex]

should magma just be like a layer way down beneath hundreds of z-levels, and some areas have varying magma depth (e.g. near a volcano would be shallow depth to the magma, the thickest part of a tectonic plate would be the highest depth)? Living that far underground would also be exceptionally dwarfy, so i dont think people should complain

The Earth's crust is several miles thick. About thirty, on land. I don't really see dwarves going quite that far down, even without considering how completely insane the environmental conditions would be. And I certainly don't see that existing on the same map as the above-ground layers.

[Dae]

In our world, the Earth's crust is ten to thirty miles thick. That doesn't mean it should be the case for every world.
Also, we should always prefer Fun(c) to mere realism.

[G-Flex]

Even a couple miles would be a bit harsh, and putting the friggin' mantle of the planet two miles below ground would screw up geology (and just about everything else) far more than is good.

Besides, living on top of the planet's mantle is probably, uh. I don't see dwarves doing it. I mean, I can handle the suspension of disbelief associated with having dwarves stand so close to magma, but nothing THAT nuts.

Besides, it just seems unnecessary. We have magma features and we can have more in the future. No real need to place them absolutely everywhere.

[umiman]

Just give us an option to build forts in oceans of lava (or at least enough lava / magma to cover a 5x5 embark) and I think everyone would be happy.

[Im_Sparks]

Just give us an option to build forts in oceans of lava (or at least enough lava / magma to cover a 5x5 embark) and I think everyone would be happy.

And how would that work out?

[Reyyvo]

you keep embarking enough until you fill up existence with the piles of bones and armor of your dwarves. Then you have a little 4x4 square you can survive on.

[Mephansteras]

Just give us an option to build forts in oceans of lava (or at least enough lava / magma to cover a 5x5 embark) and I think everyone would be happy.

That'll probably be an option once sphere-aligned lands come into play. I could easily see a Fire/Lava sphere land having an excess of magma with little islands poking out of it.

[umiman]

Just give us an option to build forts in oceans of lava (or at least enough lava / magma to cover a 5x5 embark) and I think everyone would be happy.

That'll probably be an option once sphere-aligned lands come into play. I could easily see a Fire/Lava sphere land having an excess of magma with little islands poking out of it.

Yup, that sounds great! Make fireballs jump out or waves of fire or little cool things like that and we could have a shittonne of cool new stories.

[Neonivek]

Right now I am kinda wanting to make a suggestion about expanding the gods giving them roles, follows, and creatures.

Does anyone remember what Toady has possibly said about jobs gods could have? I think he has said something about that subject.

[Dakk]

Right now I am kinda wanting to make a suggestion about expanding the gods giving them roles, follows, and creatures.

Does anyone remember what Toady has possibly said about jobs gods could have? I think he has said something about that subject.

One of the planned gameplay modes for DF, AFAIK, is one that allows you to play as a god (or at least a megabeast). So yea, that would be one use for the, what they would do apart form giving quests is beyond me though.

EDIT: Also, has anyone noticed that elves never worship gods? They worship these force thinguies, that show up in legends.