Since dwarves now sweat, does that mean that they will potentially leave a trail of sweat, or does it only attach itself to bodyparts like water does now?
If by "sweat" you mean the "open-wound-infection-chance-enhancing grime" mentioned in the dev log, I don't think it'll actually drip off the body, even if it's implemented as a secretion, which I'm not sure of. Although I suppose the grime secreted by their feet could work its way through their shoes (because the game still doesn't distinguish between the inside and outside of clothing, AFAIK) and make contact with the ground that way, so... maybe yes? Basically I have no idea, but there's some food for thought!
The grime is a special thing not stored as an actual contaminant, since it's supposed to represent near-microscopic level stuff. So it does nothing neat. Sweat itself (as linked to temperature control/exertion, say) is something I said I wouldn't be doing yet in the dev log, and that's probably still true. It's pretty easy to adapt, but there are lots of little easy things I don't have time to do.
How does quality stack? In the above mentioned sword blank example, which steps would actually count towards the quality of the sword? Is there a way to label custom products quality or no-quality?
I think right now, quality is defined by at most 1 element, and item classes either do or don't have quality.
Will it eventually be possible for workshops to provide skill modifiers based on the quality of their building materials?
Basically
How do you plan to support item quality in all this?
I think this is what Toady meant when he mentioned in the dev log that "There are some things like crafts, decorations and specific statues that couldn't currently be handled" -- crafts are annoying because they have quality markers and those aren't determined in a simple way right now.
Crafts are more annoying in the sense that a make crafts job actually makes one to three objects of various kinds. You could mimic that somewhat by using probabilities on the products, but it wouldn't be quite right.
In general, qualities don't move from reagents to products, even in the hard-coded jobs. There are special exceptions for thread and cloth, but that's still sort of an experimental thing, along the lines of a bucket handle being the only special decoration on any item. In general, the hard-coded qualities haven't had any qualities to worry about (except for thread and cloth, which is why those were the experiments), so support for reagent quality modifiers isn't going in for reactions now as it's not a pressing matter. I'm not sure what form it will eventually take. It might depend on how item parts shake out.
Anyway, I know that the current workshops are all hardcoded, but does that mean that they are implemented in the .exe itself, floorplan and everything, or does it mean that the floorplans and other basics are in the building raws, with tags like [KITCHEN] or [CRAFTSHOP] or [BUTCHERS_SHOP] or [BED]?
Yeah, the current workshops have stayed where they have always been, in the exe. For the most part, they don't interact with the reactions at all. The main stumbling block here is the interface for the jobs, which often occurs in two steps, etc., which is something that's not supported by the custom workshops setup.
What about the bones that are implemented as body parts, e.g. ribs? Can those get compound-fractured and then targeted, or just shoved around inside the body? In general, how are BP-bones treated differently from tissue-bones?
They can poke out through the body, but it doesn't recognize it in the same way as a popped out gut, because the compound fracture code always refers to the tissue, even if it is a single tissue body part. Their BP status gives them the ability to surround things in specific ways and to otherwise be related to multiple parts, but the wrestling problem for them is still related to the tissue stuff and it'll probably all be taken care of at once.
Yeah, water has always been very hardcoded, even more so than the few other materials that are remaining hardcoded. It's not clear whether reactions will be able to access it, although it would come in handy all over the place.
I would love to use a mod that separates the brewery/winery/etc. from the still, forces you to use water in brewing, and requires pipe sections and fuel at the still. Oh, and the still should have a 1/100 chance of "exploding" (steam would come in handy there too!). And the still should be able to use magma instead of fuel.
Reactions don't know how to handle buckets of water as reagents in terms of getting somebody to fill an empty bucket at a water source as an intermediate step. You can get at the materials in terms of products or simple reagents (like a boulder of ice). You can set your custom still to be magma-fueled, at least, or to use regular fuel for the reaction.
Can materials be modded in that decay into misama like chunks do?
I looked through the material template preview and couldn't find any tags relating to rotting. However, there's an item in the List (under "Some other unfinished business") for "Handling butchery/rot/fish cleaning/eat leavings vs. body materials." The answer will probably be yes but I don't think we'll know for sure until he gets to that item.
I think it was added after I posted those, but material templates/defs have a simple [ROTS] tag right now. I'm not sure if that simplicity will survive through that rot/butchery update, though, or if it'll get a timer or something.
Will the new cavernous formations be adjustable through worldgen? Meaning, adjustable for depth, size, "cavernousness"?
I still haven't gotten to the params, but there should be something to them aside from "yes/no". The "cavernousness" (I don't remember if I called it "openness" or what) is already a parameter used during cavern generation, so it's quite possible it'll be accessible from the world gen params.
Can there be partial-map aquifers with any of the new work on underground or regions/biomes/etc?
As it is now if your map covers two biomes, one with an aquifer, one without, then it will either have an aquifer across the whole map or no aquifer at all. I think it'd be really useful(fun,interesting) and be more realistic if the partial aquifer followed the biomes on your map.
Is the aquifer behavior the same as it is now? If so, how do you prevent an aquifer from completely flooding the underground on the embark site? Let alone possibly most of the underground in the world.
I've seen partial aquifer maps if I understand what you are saying. I have no idea if it's bugged now or what, but they rode the boundaries correctly. Aquifers are artificially blocked from pouring immediately into underground features in same way it works in the current version (just shutting them off in a buffer zone around the feature), but if you manage to dig into an aquifer it can still flood you out down there. With the underground lakes, it'll be easy to flood extra stuff anyway. We'll have to see how it plays out, but I don't think there's a trivial-and-satisfactory solution if you want to have underground lakes with empty caverns below them.
Since we can already export maps of a location, will there ever be a way to import them into new worlds?
Not for a long time. When I get around to site editors in world gen params (like a much more detailed version of the current world map painter), it would be a natural extension of that.
Will the new raws allow for [EDIBLE] tags on non-organic stuff? In other words, will we be able to mine for fish?
You can stick whatever tag on whatever material, so you could end up with a boulder made up of an edible material. The dwarves don't search for boulders to eat though, so you'd need to add a reaction to a building that chops it up into meat strips or something. Fish wouldn't work since a fish object has a race/caste instead of a material. Meat has a material because it uses a tissue material from the animal, so having "inorganic" meat boulder meat would likely work. I think the game would be confused to have non-edible meat actually, so a reaction that makes granite meat would probably turn out being edible the way things work now.
Mini-request: is it possible to quickfix coins into being smaller and lighter than they are now, thus stifling the problem of dorfs needing ever more boxes to store the coins in? Sounds silly but it's been eating at me for months now!
How many coins fit in a box now and how many should it be? But yeah, just staying away from coins for now would be good. It's all garbage.
When will it be time for arbitrary skills for reactions in the raws?
There's a lot of inertia there, not just because there are lots of little hard-coded things for the skills (new raw unit types? raw labor listings? those interact with entities etc. etc.), but because the framework hasn't really settled down either, for instance with weapon skill relationships and all that martial arts stuff. The future of crafts skills is also not entirely clear. Should they be broken up should the big workshop overhaul occur? That kind of thing.
In this new version will we be able to give military dwarfs priorities for types of targets. Attack nearest target, pick a target and make sure it's dead before moving on (even if it moves away)... attack ranged targets first... that sort of thing.
I know we'll be able to give specific kill orders, but I'd love to see my hammerdwarfs punch a hole in the goblin line so that the axedwarfs can charge the goblin bowmen at the back with out to much micromanaging.
There isn't anything like that right now, and I'll probably be delaying features instead of adding them at this point, unfortunately.
With the new custom workshops and the ability to add reactions to the Alchemist's shop, will you be adding the Alchemy skill back in?
The alchemist's workshop is nuked, but you can add your own. The alchemy skill is still there for you to play with, though it isn't used by any of the default stuff.
Say, Toady, in which version do you expect to be doing an update for adventure mode? I really want to have my adventurer spend time fishing and gathering near shelters built all around the world.
Also, with all the combat updates, does this mean an entirely new combat system will be made, and arrows/bolts won't be as deadly anymore?
After this release, the next series of shorter releases will be made up of, in no set order:
1) Improved sieges against your fortress
2) Adventurer skills/entity stuff, per the dev next stuff
3) Eternal suggestions voting stuff
Apologies if its been answered before but how are the random creatures generated? Per underground area or a set amount of random creatures per world?
I.e: would we more likely see one world's chasms and caves populated by masses of the same randomly generated creatures or would we see completely different randomly generated critters wherever we go?
Judging from the spoilers adventure, it seems like the creatures will be unique megabeast-style creatures, not populations of them. This may have changed, of course.
Yeah, the idea is to ease into this randomization process to avoid being knee-deep in a pile of total crap. So we're starting with a new variety of inside megabeast and titans being randomized. These individuals are created at the beginning of history in world generation as historical figures, and the titans behave as megabeasts and can cause trouble while the underground ones currently remain dormant.
Do the monstrousities occationally take whole bits of creature to tack on?
I've avoided doing cut-paste critters like minotaurs and so on because the tissue situation is complicated by that. I'm certainly all for doing it, but I want to get robust single-theme creatures up before I get ahead of myself with the mat/tissue mess.
will we be able to export these random monsters/creatures into a raw file?
So for example while we are adventuring we encounter a beast that we really like... could we go to the legends screen and export it into a file... in raw format so we can maybe tweek it to reproduce or something and have it as a monster for a mod?
I understand that a fully fledged megabeast maker integrated into arena mode might be out for now. But can we get something like a "Generate randomized megabeast" button in arena? Maybe have it controlled by init.txt and default to off.
I'm hesitant to get too far into this. The generator creates raws, so they are available, but I'll probably wait a while before making it too easy to get at them. I think it's important to maintain their specialness instead of being able to mass produce them, but once people are tired of them I might change my mind. Getting at the raws of a creature you've found during play might be fine.
Besides the randomized things, can some other pre-defined creatures be included in the HFS? Perhaps a [HFS:1] tag, with the number being a percentage or something. The randomized beasts are nice but maybe someone would want to mod so that we run into familiar faces once in a while.
There are still stock critters to reliably test out mechanics or just to mess around, and you can use their tags to put your own critter in place.
How will the randomly generated creatures be named?
It's still not decided. Sphere names are possible, and we've flirted with the idea of player naming or entity-based names. While random monsters remain unique, using the god's sphere name function is the easy way to do it (since all the random critters already have spheres), but when you want a name for a species of random critters rather than an individual, the limitations of the in-game grammar become more apparent and it makes me want to wait for the language update.