There were ~1200 posts to go through this time (like a 1/7th of the whole thread! postin' fiends!), so I missed things, no doubt. Questions in spoilers are more likely to have been missed, as the green would be invisible unless I actually found and clicked them. Not sure what to do about that, since the spoilers are appreciated. As usual, I didn't often include questions below that were addressed by other people (mostly Footkerchief!).
With the new training, and training weapons, will it still be possible to cross train an (ie) axdwarf first in wrestling (or its new equiv), and other combat skills until they are "safe", then start them with proper weapons? (and still expect a low injury rate).
You mean, without having to set them to be wrestlers explicitly? Because you can still do that. They use training weapons according to their equipment assignments. As far as I can tell from the sparring tests so far, it'll be fine however you do it, but generally they won't start sparring until they have a few skill levels.
1. Do you intend to somehow tell the players about details like personality effects, which are invisible as for now?
2. Until you make it happen, could you at least write about it in the devlog like now?
1. It's just a matter of mechanisms, as has been discussed. Thoughts, overhearing conversations, reports from appointed people. Not sure when I might get to that kind of thing though.
2. I can try, anyway. I can't make any promises for specific types of mentions for all time.
Oh yea, on the not bieng allowed to spar thing, does it take into account equipped armor which would reduce injuries or does it go by skill? Or is it more complex than that?
Nah, it just goes by skill (vs the personality of the instructor).
Will traps/pressure plates work in adventure mode in this version?
I don't think anything has changed there. The main issue is cage traps locking the game up. They need some sort of escape/starve-to-death interface. There's also the matter of other traps being unavoidable. If you don't have cage traps and don't care about not being able to disarm or avoid traps, you can turn the other ones on in the init, even in the current version. I'm not sure when I'll get to the proper fixes for this.
can those dwarf teeth that get knocked out be used as bones in crafts?
Pieces that are small won't be used. The butcher will normally eliminate these, but if they get knocked out earlier, they are just garbage.
Oh yea, I have a thought, what about the site finder? Half of the choices are going to be obsolete. So, how is the site finder going to work now that there are so many changes? Stuff like temperature, savagery, elevation, rainfall, and flux will certainly stay.
It's one of the remaining hanging issues. The easiest way will be to cut things out. The underground is interesting enough now that hopefully people won't care so much about using the site-finder for that sort of thing.
Is the contact area of a weapon giving us the size of the striking surface? So, making a weapon with a high contact area would prevent it from striking smallish embedded things, like eyes? Is the penetration size a measure of how far into the body the weapon can cut/pierce? Like, how many layers and such?
Nah, it increases the chance, because the embedding doesn't hide the part, it just makes it non-severable. The only way to hide things eyes right now would be something like a partial containment relationship with the skull or something... that might not be out of place, but I'm not sure if it'll lead to weird things or not, since the skull is internal and the eyes are external. And yeah, the penetration size controls how deep it can go, to avoid other strange things.
If you wrestle something to death (or kick), do your graspers record the kill? and upon death or severing..
Ha ha, nah. But if you sever your own hand and kill somebody with it, it will.
(re: hidden artifact)
Does this happen even if you atom-smash the artifact?
Yep. Artifacts are very old, and deleting them entirely is a rickety process I need to work on at some point. Right now it just hides them and then brings them back. A quick-fix destroyed flag could be added, but I'd rather just do it correctly. Before, there was also the matter of them being magical and they weren't supposed to be destroyable. That isn't the case anymore.
Do multiple attachments stack? For example: A legendary swordsman's sword is found and used by another swordsman for years and he becomes attached, Does it become even more legendary? Does the sword become easier to attach to?
Nah, all the legends are saved, but the guy doesn't care. I had to make that decision when I was doing it, and it's the sort of thing that's easy to change one way or the other, but the way it should probably work (looking at prior events that have some sort of meaning to the current owner) is more time-consuming.
Will there be any indication to the player when a dwarf become attached to a weapon to the point of rejecting upgrades ?
Yeah, there's an announcement for it. We'll have to see some years-in forts in action to see if this gets spammish at all. I think it should be fine, but I can't be sure.
Will it be possible to change the length and frequency of pregnancies?
Nope, not yet. There's a minor complicating issue that you have to decide how much impact the caste of the mother and the caste of the unborn child have, and that the caste and even number of children aren't determined currently until they are born.
Is it possible for my adventurer to become attached to an item? Would it be possible for, say, a rock, to get it's own mention in legends that way?
Adventurers don't form attachments, because I think that's getting inside your head too much... well, it's sort of a can of worms topic that has come up before. In any case, this should be mitigated at some point by having objects be nameable by you at any time, which is your way of saying you are attached to the object. It'll start recording events for them then, but it would still be able to judge the ones that are actually important by looking at the events, so you shouldn't be able to game the system this way, just get the information that you want. It's one of those things that didn't make it in this time.
(in reference to the 11/21 devlog) By squad boxes, you mean stuff like chests/coffers, cabinets, and possibly bins, right?
Yeah. Bins are still for piles though.
Would the material or weight of one's footwear or gauntlets affect the damage of kicks or punches in the next version?
Nah, this one is still sitting in the dangling issues for this release. It would be pretty quick to make it work, but it's all a matter of time at this point. I have a vague memory of doing something with it, but I couldn't find anything.
Now that the distinction between the nature-aligned above-ground animal-people and their twisted, antagonistic underground cousins has been developed, will (should?) elves still take Tower Caps into account when conducting tree-cap diplomacy?
They probably shouldn't know about them, regardless of what they'd think. Nothing has changed for this time around if I remember, though. I think they care when glumprongs are chopped down, so the moral virtues of the tree in question don't matter. I'm not sure if they should or not, since the nature of the relationship between elves and their named trees etc. hasn't really been developed yet. I don't see tower caps being as evil as glumprongs in any case, but perhaps there are bad ones deeper down...
How much will personality factor into things? Is it going to be really bad to get someone in the military who isn't loving it? Will this cross over to other job training?
I think the only annoyance will be if you land somebody who's just totally lazy, since they won't train at all on their own. They'll still do their job though. Nothing like those military-comedy movies yet, with the real jokers.
Do soldiers who drink from their flasks or eat food from their backpacks automatically try to rush off and replenish their supply as soon as they consume something? Will they eat their food at a chair/table if it's close enough?
They don't use nearby furniture for pack food. They should chill out on the refills until they get really hungry, when they are on active duty, but I don't think I tested that particular case (it's slightly different from the normal food fetching case). I've noted the check down, so you won't have to worry about it.
Will we be able to name our squads? While its fun to have the random names, its still useful to be able to name them stuff like 1st axe battalion: codename Axedragon (maybe not that long, but you get the idea), now that squads are functional.
You can't do anything at this point if I remember. There was previously all that stuff about them renaming squads when they became commanders and so on, but I think that has all fallen by the wayside with all the restructuring, so the door has probably opened for named squads now, anyway.
Toady, I know cave-ins are not gonna happen for this release, but do you have any rough idea when you are planning on getting around to it?
1-On a gameplay point of view. Should it be challenging to dig, could your fortress be sapped, or do you want the challenge to be somewhere else?
2-On a technical point of view. How difficult would it be to implement a cave-in calculator?
3-If you think it's important, how high is it on your priority list?
I don't have a timeline for it. It's fallen pretty far back now because it's a complicated problem that'll also probably be a bit of a CPU drag during digging if it does reality any kind of justice, though I'm not sure what will end up happening.
There's something to be said for making mining very difficult, but if it's hard to get your first room up in a way that involves player involvement, and those problems are no less hard as time passes, a large fortress would be unplayable because expansion would take up too much of your attention.
I'm personally all for having enemies dig through fortresses, but the current idea is to have an init setting for it, since some people have aesthetic issues there. The init setting would be pro-dig. Like other init settings it might work better as a world gen param to avoid temptations, but I'm not sure.
Do any of the new military controlls cross over to Hunters? I know their ammo is handled in a similar way to squads, but can we give them patrols, so they stick to certain areas, or specific kill orders?
Nah. They've always been in a limbo between a profession and soldier. I'm not sure what will end up happening. I'm still not convinced that it's a good idea to move it completely over to squads, because hunters should have more of their own character.
If you don't have any of the type of ammunition assigned to your hunter, will he still chase down animals and beat them to death with his crossbow(or other assigned ranged weapon...) or will he have errors about not being able to find appropriate ammunition and stop hunting until his equipment is reassigned or more appropriate bolts created or bought?
I might still need to handle it, but there's a note for it. People might need to find a new way to execute immigrants they don't want around.
What have the download numbers been lately on the website?
16932 from the main mirror in November. The others are usually 50% of that total, so something like 25000 of 40d. The mac 40d had 2280. The small one had 425. 40d16 for windows had 1958, linux had 788 and mac had 209. I have no idea how many of those downloads were repeats or incomplete or whatever, though.
Toady, will the training weapons that you've added to the game be available as an object type that moods can create?
I haven't particularly excluded them yet. I guess it would be sort of depressing to get one.
Have caste selectors been added to the creature graphics system?
I thought they were, but maybe that was just raw positions. I've made a note.
Are we going to be able to make cloth quivers at some point? They show up often enough on migrants and raiders, but we still can't do that ourselves.
It looks like the code is confused there, since they are all supposed to be leather unless the civ can't handle it (elves). There are places where it uses any clothing material though. I'm not sure what the actual situation should be, without knowing more about quivers.
If these "gasses" work like smoke/steam/mist/miasma/boiling materials do now, doesn't that mean that there's going to be a lot of gas flows obscuring the player's vision? I know that work as a punishing effect of smoke and miasma, but it sounds like I'm going to be picking my way through dust clouds and steam anytime there's an unusual situation. Has the visual effect of "gasses" been changed at all?
There aren't a lot more of them at once, really, just more variety, but I've been thinking about it since one of those boiling blood experiments or whenever. The obscuring factor of a lot of them might have to be removed. Even things like smoke are questionable, at least in dwarf mode where you have more knowledge. In adv mode, it should just show you remembered objects in item lists instead of actual objects, in smoky areas, or something. Anyway, I haven't done anything with it yet.
Toady, how do you actually handle flows and water pressure? Did you look at hydrogeological programs like modflow which handle flows through rock, soil and free space, based on permeability, poreosity, fluid viscosity, pressure and so on? I know you do a lot of serious research. :-) obviously over doing the details of flows would be a a bit too much and would put a strain on the auld CPU but if you could get flow dissection and head/pressure for each cube and set it as a flag and then... Wait I'm getting a head of myself here... How are flows currently handled, roughly what do you see/want to happen in the future? How much is too much?
I think that Gamasutra article is pretty much what I've got and all I know how to do without causing more CPU abuse.
Will muddied ground be cleanable/autocleaned/seasonal cleaned?
Detailed ground with mud spatter is marked for the cleaning job. I think the seasonal spatter cleanup has been shut off tentatively so we can see how the amounts effect that overall. If it doesn't track far away from the farms, it should look cool. It shouldn't take over everything like before, but we'll have to see.
Any plans for catgut?
Any plans for catgut?
Oops, sorry about that! I enter all the names manually, and Neonivek had a period of question asking that made me autocomplete, he he he.
Toady, if it comes down to it, I'd prefer that when you're adjusting numbers of objects for game balance purpose, that you keep things proportional. You could always make dwarves require a certain amount of food per meal, after all... and make kittens provide a tiny bit, with elephants an all those multiple chucks able to provide more towards that meal.
It's not like it's at ALL difficult to feed your dwarves at the moment. Increasing their monthly intake requirement wouldn't be a problem for the game. In fact, it might be just what we need.
The problem with increasing monthly intake requirements are the additional eating jobs they'd have to do, taking away from their overall time and productivity. Forcing them to grab larger portions at once or something would be good, especially after the cooking exploits are handled. Then just going up and eating one eyeball would be something I guess they'd avoid unless they were starving. The issue is to make sure they aren't just snacking on eyeballs all the time and not working.
Did ivory/horn/teeth/etc. become options for decorations as well?
Yeah.
With all the new bone/horn/ivory/tooth items, are they now able to be put in bins?
You mean the raw components? They are currently treated as refuse, which isn't binable. There's a sort of added complication with the sizes of some of these butchered pieces.
Will Dwarves be able to wear necklaces/rings etc.... Would be grand if dwarves would spend money etc.. on necklaces and rings if they came in a material/form they enjoy
They used to raid boxes for them and put them on, but I don't think there's anything there for that now. Not sure when I'll get back to it, but yeah, they are there to be worn. I think the tax collector's guards will still do it to owned items in boxes, but that's quite rare.
Are the little oddball tokens (like[SAPLING_DROWN_LEVEL:#]) ever going to be put into vanilla? Is there some horrendous bug relating to them that I am currently unaware of? They don't appear broken. All but the non-sapling tree drown level seem to work fine from what I observe.
I say it because this current blank stockpile the bottom of you channels solution seems a bit silly.
I don't understand. Bottom of what? Solution for what?
Will dwarves eventually hide knowledge from each other or refuse to learn because they do not like the teacher? In this way you could end up with multiple medical traditions, kinda like DO's and MD's.
Oh I don't know. It all sounds like fair game once the knowledge system is improved, but also a kind of out of the way thing.
Toady, about the fell-mood use of corpses, will Dwarves making stuff out of other Dwarves use all the parts now? Will what doesn't get used just be left laying around? And what about the use of skulls, like an artifact totem?
They don't insta-tan skin anymore, which doesn't leave them with much. Bones pretty much. Until I get to the totem item (hopefully today) they don't use skulls either. The debris is vaporized for moods.
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Topic: Future of the Fortress: List of Remaining Items (Read 3667191 times)