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[PermanentInk]

Foo is a word used in Nethack, often used in place of specific but pedantic words. Most often used when dealing with wishing.

Example: "I wished for fooproof gauntlets of dexterity" when foo, in this instance, could mean both waterproof and fireproof.

It sees a lot wider use than that, most especially in computer programming.  "Foo" and other words like it are known as metasyntactic variables.  "Foo" is the first one generally used (analogous to using x by default when you need a variable name in algebra); "bar" generally follows, and there are various others which see some degree of use ("baz", "quux", etc.).  Programmers in other languages or regions have their own; I've heard "fred" and "barney" are used a lot in the U.K.  The original "foo" and "bar" terms come from the (WWII-era?) U.S. military slang "fubar," which is a well-known acronym.

Anyway, google "metasyntactic variables" (or just "foo") if you're interested.

[Reese]

I'd love to see a clothman or Leatherman.
Like a giant pile of possessed garments, sewn together and whatnot.

And fell mood leather workers could have a small chance of making one.

I'd like to see a leather man too, but I doubt the dwarfs even have the technology for a butterfly knife... that would be awesome, though: "Kobold be sapping mah orbital magma cannon!"

[JoshuaFH]

Foo is a word used in Nethack, often used in place of specific but pedantic words. Most often used when dealing with wishing.

Example: "I wished for fooproof gauntlets of dexterity" when foo, in this instance, could mean both waterproof and fireproof.

It sees a lot wider use than that, most especially in computer programming.  "Foo" and other words like it are known as metasyntactic variables.  "Foo" is the first one generally used (analogous to using x by default when you need a variable name in algebra); "bar" generally follows, and there are various others which see some degree of use ("baz", "quux", etc.).  Programmers in other languages or regions have their own; I've heard "fred" and "barney" are used a lot in the U.K.  The original "foo" and "bar" terms come from the (WWII-era?) U.S. military slang "fubar," which is a well-known acronym.

Anyway, google "metasyntactic variables" (or just "foo") if you're interested.

See, I didn't know this. Thanks for telling me, because I used to not know, but now I do. My collection of miscellaneous collection grows ever larger.

I have a question, about the game, not fubar:

Would the selection of 'war' animals be larger or even open-ended? If so, would the process of training animals be more complex than rubbing them against the training workshop for a while?

[smjjames]

Would the selection of 'war' animals be larger or even open-ended? If so, would the process of training animals be more complex than rubbing them against the training workshop for a while?

You can already do this by adding the pet and trainable tag to whatever you want to be tameable and war/hunting trained. If this isn't what you meant, then could you clarify?

[JoshuaFH]

In vanilla, I mean.

[smjjames]

Its still kind of moot because you may as well go into the raws and add the tags yourself.

[JoshuaFH]

But I have no idea how flagrant the changes to the raws are going to be, and it might not be that simple in the future.

[Warlord255]

Can poisons have beneficial effects, such as attribute boosts, as they are now, such as by putting a negative value on a stat penalty? If not, will they in the future?

Also; For poisonous contaminants, might seperate contaminants from the same creature type - I.E. seperate blood contaminants from two venomous beasts - accidentally trigger seperately, applying the poison twice?

[smjjames]

For the first part, I guess you mean like a drug of some kind?

Perhaps a poison that reduces reduces intelligence but raises the strength, toughness, and rage (anger) stats? I know there isn't really any intelligence or 'smarts' stat (there is a trait though), but just trying to make an example to see if I get what you are saying.

For the second part, having the poison stack makes sense, at least biologically, but from a game balance point of view, not sure.

[JoshuaFH]

EPIPHANY!

Would it be possible to create a poison that would induce berserk rage, melancholy, raving madness, etc?

[AbacusWizard]

At some point in the future I'd love to see a legitimate Alchemist's Workshop making potions that boost various attributes of those that drink them--not only combat stats for soldiers, but also things like strength and speed for haulers and miners, productivity for craftsdwarves, etc. Maybe even Dwarven Coffee (brewed from rock nuts, perhaps?) to reduce need for sleep!

[Footkerchief]

What are your plans for the <foo>man cultures? Will they wind up being distinct with different cultures and ethics, or will they mostly be closer to semi-intelligent savages? Will they ever start rudimentary buildings and societies?

While Footkerchief will probably supply an actual quote, I'm pretty sure the mini-entities that animalmen will form in the next version are what you're talking about already.  I think Toady mentioned things like huts and tribes.

Yeah, so here's the basic setup of the underground cultures:

[...] there is a new full entity definition for the underground animal peoples, and it has 8 creature entries.  This means that for each layer, it'll choose from among the 8 available and create a layer civ, just of that kind.  You can change the selection of weapons and everything else in the raws there.  Because the civ is "LAYER_LINKED", a shortcut flag until I sort this out, things like trading and so on won't be respected.  It's a catch-all flag much like BABY_SNATCHER and NUISANCE used to be, and it'll undergo the same kind of evolution most likely, until things start to make more sense.

So in the next version, the cultural differences between the underground animal peoples will be pretty minor, since they're all using the same basic entity def.  That'll change in the future though, since an increasing number of entity properties (such as ethics) are being "lifted into an entity instance," allowing cultures to mutate and diverge over time.  Toady talked a lot about this (and other aspects of procedurally generated cultures) in DF Talk 5.

As for the technology level and goal-oriented-ness of the undergrounders, we got some details about that in DF Talk 3:

Spoiler: long quote (click to show/hide)

Rainseeker:   That's a good question; [1a]are your animal people going to be like animals - behave like animals - or are they going to be like they are know, kind of tribal?
Toady:   They're going to be even more advanced really, than they were before. There was this 2D level of advancement back in the old versions where you had batmen flying on tame giant bats with blowguns that were made out of cave spider legs that had cave spider venom on little darts and stuff, and then we moved into the 3D version and I lost some of my ties to the underground there and so I had to drop all that. Then they just became these savage, rarely encountered monsters, and it was kind of boring.
[...]
The underground ones just because they're underground are going to be more evil in a sense and at least a little more civilized also with their little weapons and things. The aboveground ones were supposed to be a bit more at harmony with the overall nature and forest spirits and so on. Although this is one of those things that hasn't quite gelled yet. In any case for the underground this time around there's going to be little groups of creatures: they can attack your fortress, you can bump into them in adventure mode with their little crude weapons and they're probably going to be riding various cave critters and so on.
[...]
Rainseeker:   [1b]So once you break into a cave, what is their goal going to be?
Toady:   It depends on what you've got. So if we're talking about animal peoples, the animal peoples don't really have much more of a brain than they used to, and they're just bent on causing as much trouble as they can, violently, to your poor critters. I don't have a notion of them coming in there as kind of a raiding party, but it's possible that could happen, like the ratmen, if they're converted into food and item raiders - which would be kind of fitting their personality, although then they'd end up a lot like the kobalds - that's quite possible. Right now it's all about just killing as many dwarves as they can before they sneak back off.

Anything beyond that is probably a spoiler of the wait-and-see variety.

Can poisons have beneficial effects, such as attribute boosts, as they are now, such as by putting a negative value on a stat penalty? If not, will they in the future?

Would it be possible to create a poison that would induce berserk rage, melancholy, raving madness, etc?

These are the available poisoning effects: "pain, swelling, oozing wounds, bruising, blisters, numbness, paralysis, fever, bleeding, coughing/vomiting blood, nausea, vomiting, unconsciousness, necrosis, impaired vision, drowsiness and dizziness."  Direct stat penalties and mood/insanity effects aren't available, although they certainly might show up later on.  I doubt the severity parameter (which you can see being used in this SPOILER LINK as "SEV") accepts a negative value, since most of the available effects don't have obvious inversions, e.g. what does it mean to have "negative blisters"?

Also; For poisonous contaminants, might seperate contaminants from the same creature type - I.E. seperate blood contaminants from two venomous beasts - accidentally trigger seperately, applying the poison twice?

The poison isn't "applied" in an instantaneous fashion -- rather its effects crescendo and fall off over a period of time defined in the raws (this is also observable in the spoiler link above).  Being bitten twice would probably just cause these effects to overlap, as you'd expect, although that might only hold for poisons with the SIZE_DILUTES flag.

[JoshuaFH]

Would you begrudge me if I suggested Rage, melancholy, madness inducing poisons or something similar?

[Innominate]

Would you begrudge me if I suggested Rage, melancholy, madness inducing poisons or something similar?

On the contrary, I think we would all love you for it.

[Zironic]

Would you begrudge me if I suggested Rage, melancholy, madness inducing poisons or something similar?

On the contrary, I think we would all love you for it.

A zombifying poison.