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[Jimmy]

Wounds/Combat and Descriptions seem like one or two day jobs from their remaining items. Health Care and Map Features might be as well. But the Entity Positions, Squads and unfinished business have a fair bit left, and Sites and Final are still untouched. This doesn't count further additions that may happen.

Still, it's a real treat to read the devnotes and see these rapid-fire updates.

On a completely unrelated note, I only just noticed that Health Care includes soap use. Wow.

[Eduren]

Oh, if only food would be made into RAWS...

What, like the kitchen uncooking stuff?

No, so it would be moddable.

I'd LOVE to be able to add new plants and recipes, especially if you could define calories/fat etc

Twinkies anyone?

[Toady One]

People had to wait almost two years (aug31, 2004 to aug8, 2006) between me putting up the dragonfire teaser video and releasing the first version of the game, but this is definitely the worst wait since then, and if you go by the number of people * the time waited, I'm incurring more misery this time around.  I don't think we'll make it to two years this time, but a September release is surely impossible, and so, yeah, we're going to cross the soon to be infamous one year wait boundary on September 6th.  I shall catch shit, and then I'll keep working, he he he.

[ToonyMan]

This is why you don't post release dates.   


EDIT:  Or have time measurements for that matter!


EDIT EDIT:  NOT SAYING YOU DID.


EDIT EDIT EDIT:  I don't think you did.

[Org]

Will lazy dwarves:
Make worse items?
Work slower?
Use more material?
Any combination of the above?

[Footkerchief]

1)  With the new material system, squad update, preliminary combat system, and formations, I'd like to address an issue.  It seems that single, highly-trained creatures receive excessive combat bonuses at high skill levels, meaning that even when surrounded by larger, powerful, somewhat skilled enemies they cannot be touched.  Is there any possibility of granting additional advantages to enemies with massive numerical strength?  Maybe additional rear and side attack bonuses, maybe a horde bonus (especially for antmen, ratmen, etc)?  Legendary-level dwarves are just too untouchable right now.

Toady recently commented on an already implemented (in the current version) mechanic that should make things harder on champions when they get surrounded:

Will formations give any bonuses other then simply having your dwarves where you want them?  Will they allow you to make your dwarves "face" a certain direction for better combat bonuses?  Or are there other bonuses you have in mind?

The way facing works in the current version, anything that can stop you from being flanked would already be a good thing, though with the amount of hopping around in the current combat, we'll have to see how formations merge with that.  Perhaps it should just set the option adventurers have to stop them from hopping if the formation is to be kept tightly.  There are things I'd eventually like to do with polearms vs. charging and all that kind of thing, etc., but there aren't enough underlying mechanics yet in terms of charging.  For now, being able to stop from being surrounded and being able to have an immediate 3 to 1 advantage on lone critters that step up to a line and so on should be something, as well as being able to wheel around a bit to get even higher ratios.  I'm not really sure how it'll play out though, especially on the first pass.  I also haven't done any reading yet.

However, yeah, the effects aren't very visible right now.  Probably the numbers just need tweaking.  I don't know if that got altered much for the upcoming release.

2)  What is planned for the caves/explorable areas in adventure mode for this release?  I know they have to be redone; any chance of incorporating some of the new fun stuff into adventure mode?  I'd love to see the new HFS skulking around the depths of an abandoned fortress upon exploration.

There's been a lot of emphasis on making the new caves accessible to adventurers (bolding is mine):

04/03/2009:
[...]
 I also think I'll be able to update discovery/revealing of the local underground so that it depends more on where your dwarves have actually been, instead of revealing everything. Active LOS around every dwarf isn't feasible, but it can push the frontier off through the connected areas when a dwarf is vaguely nearby, anyway, so that there can be enormous connected (adventure-explorable) caverns without having them pre-revealed just because you have some dwarves tinkering around far, far above. I'm sure there will be some issues, but that's normal. This doesn't mean everything will be connected... I guess that might as well be up to world generation, anyway.

04/13/2009:
[...]
This particular layer covers the entire world and can be walked through from end to end by an adventurer (though I haven't tested that yet, it looks fine so far). They don't all need to be so airy, but this one would be hard to miss digging down, compared to what we've currently got.

04/21/2009: The animal people civilizations are now placed in the layers, associated to large populations, and I added the map revealing mechanism that I mentioned back on the 3rd. I took my first adventurer down into an abandoned fort that had penetrated an underground layer and walked over to the next world map square, so that all seems to be working. Next up likely the attack revamp.

[Tenebrais]

I love the casual off-handed way Toady mentions that he's now given dwarves nutrition. Most developers would consider this a major, version-selling point, even in the rather basic state it's in now.

[Dwarfu]

... that he's now given dwarves nutrition.

Does this plump helmet make my fat ass look fat?

[G-Flex]

Speaking of which, a question related to this:

It uses the recuperation attribute to differentiate them metabolically at this point

Will every dwarf have the same ceiling for how high their attributes can go? And if so, is it reasonable to conclude that all your soldier dwarves will eventually be thin as rails since they'll all have super-high physical attributes? And would this be balanced by some dwarves eating substantially more than others based on personality traits and the like?

[IHateOutside]

Most developers would consider this a major, version-selling point, even in the rather basic state it's in now.

A large percentage of that list would be major selling points for games. My favourites are everything in the venom section and health care.

[Zironic]

It's almost been a year, but it's also a huge update.

[James.Denholm]

neuter the cats so they cant breed, or since gentalia wont be in a release any time soon

Come on, they had this in the 1400's and earlier, right..? ..right....? At least neutering, they just sort of stick right out there and it'll keep the chances down!

Well, another reason behind my bringing this up is so that the player has more control over simple genetic modifications. That may initially not make any sense, but think of it this way: Selective breeding.

Let's say I want to specifically breed black horses (I'm assuming that at some point animals will have at least basic fur colours, seeing as we're going to be getting complex physical descriptions of dwarves). What's the best way to do this? Neuter all the chestnut/ashen/whatever ones. Some may think of that as a bit barbaric, but something similar is done, every day, in the wool industries. Stud rams are selected based on their wool (and most likely other factors, of course), and set free amongst the ewes. Should an ewe then give birth to a male, the male is then typically neutered, so that he isn't able to mess up the quality of the wool and so forth. Or something like that.

[G-Flex]

Yeah, I remember suggesting neutering before. It's totally in line with the tech era, as far as I remember.

[Areyar]

It would be sensible when creatures choose their gods based on what they desire or fear: wealth, strength, bad luck for their enemies/competitors, peace, sunny weather, rain, etc. You would then get dynamics like the following: in general dwarves want wealth, worshipping the god of wealth. That god gains power and makes the dwarves wealthy. When they are wealthy, they wish to have the most wealth, so they start worshipping the god of envy and strife, to take down their competitors down a peg. That god then does his thing and of as a result conflict breaks out everywhere. So they start worshipping the god of peace, who dampens conflict, etc. It will keep itself going.

Otherwise, when dwarves worship powerful gods, and worship makes gods powerful, we'll be stuck with a monotheistic world very quickly.

Have you posted that in one of the religion threads?  That's a good way of looking at it.  Genius

true. therefore you'd need a reason/mechanism by which new deities are genesissed and have a greater attraction than established gods. It think the economics-equation works well: a god with numerous worshippers is more powerfull, but he will less likely give a worshipper personal attention, while a lesser deity will have time and reason to dote more on his customers.
An analogy can be made with economics: big monopolistic corporations take little heed of the little man and are more concerned with crowding out competitors, while small upstarts are very active and try to carve out a niche being at first very attentative to prospective customers needs.
Also monotheism is not the only end-state. Taking into account mutualism and cooperation, you could end up with a pantheon that is an extended family. Naturally they end up killing each other anyhow, ending the universe.
There aught to be a rule: a single god cannot exist, the Singularity will implode and either recreate the universe in his/her/its image or suffer boredom/loneliness dementia and either desitegrate into smaller fractional personalities or take a consort from the world and create offspring...diluting its power and ending its solipsism.

heh. sleepdeprived rant. sorry, hope it makes some sense.

[Thursday Postal]

neuter the cats so they cant breed, or since gentalia wont be in a release any time soon

Come on, they had this in the 1400's and earlier, right..? ..right....? At least neutering, they just sort of stick right out there and it'll keep the chances down!

Well, another reason behind my bringing this up is so that the player has more control over simple genetic modifications. That may initially not make any sense, but think of it this way: Selective breeding.

Let's say I want to specifically breed black horses (I'm assuming that at some point animals will have at least basic fur colours, seeing as we're going to be getting complex physical descriptions of dwarves). What's the best way to do this? Neuter all the chestnut/ashen/whatever ones. Some may think of that as a bit barbaric, but something similar is done, every day, in the wool industries. Stud rams are selected based on their wool (and most likely other factors, of course), and set free amongst the ewes. Should an ewe then give birth to a male, the male is then typically neutered, so that he isn't able to mess up the quality of the wool and so forth. Or something like that.

Alternately, there could be an animal handling job related to it, and a stable building in which you could keep your prized horses separate from the rest..

Well, breeding or not there should be stables and more animal keeping jobs.