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[Vester]

Not really. He does has a nice voice.

[Neonivek]

Djinn could be done rather well with megabeasts. Also, Forgotten Beasts/Evil Titans pretty much mean that Cthulhu is in vanilla DF next version

Cthuhu is a Cosmic Space God who died and fell into the ocean (or fell into the ocean and died) whos very presence causes insanity and the bending of reality itself. Even a Squid Octopus Man with super strength and spheres of Chaos, Water, and insanity wouldn't be Cthuhu.

And there is the first problem. You tried to lump a Djinn with the Megabeasts when there is no reason to. They arn't giant, nor are they that powerful. Which creates the other problem, Toady will basically have to define Megabeasts, Semimegabeasts, and powers as far as what they mean.

Also yes I did mean malicious and benevolent.

HOLY COW THE TALK!?! I thought he was sick before they recorded it.

[Lancensis]

Djinn could be done rather well with megabeasts. Also, Forgotten Beasts/Evil Titans pretty much mean that Cthulhu is in vanilla DF next version

Cthuhu is a Cosmic Space God who died and fell into the ocean (or fell into the ocean and died) whos very presence causes insanity and the bending of reality itself. Even a Squid Octopus Man with super strength and spheres of Chaos, Water, and insanity wouldn't be Cthuhu.

Spoilered since Call of Cthulhu/Mountains of Madness are still well worth a read.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Well, the one time Cthulhu actually puts in an in-person appearance in Lovecraft's writing, it doesn't really do a whole lot more than smush a bunch of sailors. In addition, the fact that during the 50-odd million years that pass between its coming to Earth, and retiring to R'lyeh to sleep, its race warred with the Elder Things without completely wiping them from existence probably indicates that it was far from unstoppable.

[Neonivek]

It is more then just raw strength.

[Vicomt]

It's the insanity that makes Cthulhu what it is. Without a [CAUSESINSANITY] tag in DF, it can never be replicated.

actually, that reminds me, are there any plans to add basilisk/medusa/cthulhu effects like turing dwarfs into stone or making them insane?

[Totaku]

I see several of you state that he seemed sick but sounds fine during the DF talk. And judging on the daialouge that takes place during the show and especially Rainseeker's brief and small speech he made.

The DF talk was made sometime before Christmas (which was the time Toady contracted H1N1.) That's why Toady sounds fine during the podcast.

As for what Toady stated on the dev blog, he definetly sounds like he's coming on his way back and could be getting back to work soon. Though what Rainseeker mentions in the DF talk topic, it likely indicated that Toady's still not quite at tip top condition yet. But I got a feeling he's going to likely start giving updates soon since he said that there will be developments.

[Akigagak]

It's the insanity that makes Cthulhu what it is. Without a [CAUSESINSANITY] tag in DF, it can never be replicated.

actually, that reminds me, are there any plans to add basilisk/medusa/cthulhu effects like turing dwarfs into stone or making them insane?

IIRC there was talk about using poisons to simulate things like that. They would be invisible and air-borne, and would trigger various things like berserk and possibly fey/fell moods.

[Neonivek]

Oddly enough Rainseeker seemed to believe the Podcast would be out by Christmas (or at least december) judging by some of his final statements.

Also Cthuhu madness isn't a toxin it is him being intwined with the primal history of all human beings. He is a memory that all know but keep deep in their subconscious.

He also drives sleeping people insane from the other side of the planet. So there is more to it then simply poisoning people.

[Knight Otu]

Good to hear that Toady One continues to recover. Given Rainseeker's comment, he should rest a few days more, though.

IIRC there was talk about using poisons to simulate things like that. They would be invisible and air-borne, and would trigger various things like berserk and possibly fey/fell moods.

The poison framework should work as one of the first steps to such abilities:

I decided to take a detour into poison land today. The framework should be easily extended to other material effects and to some non-material effects on creatures as well later on (for instance, alcohol effects or ointments that do whatever, as well as auras around creatures, 'gaze attacks', etc etc), but for now, I'm going to go with contact/injected/inhaled poisons ...

, and an aura can sort of be cheated with the new version (material breath as a surrounding cloud). Petrification isn't in yet, though permanent paralysis and other such fun stuff is possible.

[Footkerchief]

actually, that reminds me, are there any plans to add basilisk/medusa/cthulhu effects like turing dwarfs into stone or making them insane?

Very probably.  Toady mentioned the future possibility of "gaze attacks" and "auras around creatures" when he was implementing poisons.

[Lancensis]

It's the insanity that makes Cthulhu what it is. Without a [CAUSESINSANITY] tag in DF, it can never be replicated.

Well I hate to disillusion you, but he does that to maybe two people, and one of them was already having a pretty bad day.

[Chthonic]

It's the insanity that makes Cthulhu what it is. Without a [CAUSESINSANITY] tag in DF, it can never be replicated.

Well I hate to disillusion you, but he does that to maybe two people, and one of them was already having a pretty bad day.

Cthulhu doesn't need a [CAUSESINSANITY] tag/aura.  Just by existing, he drives dreamers mad across the breadth of the world.  In fact, the prevalence of insanity in dwarven society (hell . . . the pervasiveness of elves as a civilization) is a powerful argument that Toady has already incorporated Cthulhu into Dwarf Fortress and hidden him in sunken R'lyeh.

You just don't have a boat, so you can't find him.

[Neonivek]

Chthonic got to it first.

Though remember that in the Lovecraft world the knowledge of the supernatural drives you insane naturally.

[Shoku]

There's a reason in the real world why cheetahs and kangaroos (for instance) don't live together.

Different organisms exist in different ecological niches. You can't just mix and match types that can theoretically live in the same areas and expect everything to be okay. That's why invasive species are bad.

Yes but how the hell is the game going to recognize this with only general info like roaming and carnivore?

I never said it should. Obviously the game would need to keep track of more complex behavior and predator/prey interactions.

Ecology is a pain in the butt and no automatic worldgen system is going to take enough things into account to make people happy.

Yes, it's difficult, and it can't be perfect. That doesn't mean that isn't at all possible. You could make the same argument about a lot of things DF already has or will have in the next version. If the game can use different values concerning the elasticity of a material and reasonably apply them to things like combat, then there's a good case for complex behavioral and physical traits to be represented in ecology.

It's not as if things as difficult as this aren't routinely mentioned by Toady as part of the development plan.

So what I'm really getting at is that you're asking for magic solutions. "Let's make it incredibly complex but also not processor intensive."

I don't believe I ever said anything of the sort. Also, worldgen is a point where you can deal with things being a bit more computationally expensive, because it's a fixed-cost thing; the world taking longer to generate doesn't affect gameplay.

And again, I don't think I or anyone else is claiming that an ecological simulation can be perfect or take everything into account. But it can still exist to some passable degree or another.

You're not really adding anything though. "Hey I'd like it if the game did more stuff that I'm not really going to describe." "I know we're talking about a problem so my solution is to expect someone else to do all the work that makes it not a problem."

You could do by introducing lists to every natural creature. Which are enemies, which eat which. Introduce creature species and genus. Say that cats eat rodents, for example, and make them enemies - cats will therefore hunt and kill rodents if they're more numerous and stronger.

Having so many pointers between entities is going to be a nightmare isn't it?

Toady's back 

squeeeel! ;DDD

Yes, one mouth wasn't enough, nor two. I needed three.

It hasn't gone anywhere that it hasn't been before, and ThreeToe's done his usual good job as a mod fixing any problems.

As mentioned a page or two back, the thread grew 1000 posts (10% of the entire year old thread) in 2 weeks, most of which were bullshit, or people arguing with the bullshit, or people arguing with the people arguing with the bullshit, and so on and so forth.

The irony of my own post is not lost on me, don't worry, but this thread has been downright awful since the lack of updates, and I'm anxious to see it return to the former "Hey new devlog! -> discuss new devlog -> Questions for toady -> Answers from toady -> Hey new devlog!" cycle.

Well how many posts did we have for "I bet t's out by Christmas!" before then?

It's the insanity that makes Cthulhu what it is. Without a [CAUSESINSANITY] tag in DF, it can never be replicated.

actually, that reminds me, are there any plans to add basilisk/medusa/cthulhu effects like turing dwarfs into stone or making them insane?

Probably be good to have complex alchemy in place so that you can medically fight the effects instead of fighting any of those just automatically meaning you will lose everything you sent at them.

Once a dwarf is a statue or insane I'm fine saying it's past the point of no return but if you have to send your army at a basilisk and they are a suitable army you should probably be able to keep most of them.

Though I guess if it becomes possible to specifically stab out something's eyes first the stonegaze stuff would probably be a functional alternative there but there's not a defined spot on Cthulu that I know of that you could cripple to be mentally safe. Well really with him I thought trying to beat him up mostly took you from being against a god to having a pair of broken arms and being against a god.

[Sean Mirrsen]

We can still say it'll be out by Christmas, only this time we have more of a chance to be right.

And simply having preset interations between genuses is better than trying to emulate it all. Well, maybe not "better", but simpler and more straightforward. Emulating is more of a task, but can still be reduced to a matrix of possible interactions. Cross-check all creatures living in the same biomes, check food prefrences and behavior, match activity cycles, and you'll have an appropriately realistic system. So, every worldgen cycle, reduce the victim populations in every area by (their predators population in same area times fuzzy number), and then apply growth again.