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[Footkerchief]

Everyone: don't mistake the game's current lack of intoxication for an indication that it's canonical or something.  There's a dev goal about drunk dwarves:

# PowerGoal175, THE POWER OF FRIENDSHIP, (Future): The dwarf stumbles out of the whiskey stockpile and falls flat on his face. Finding him there, his companions haul him to bed.

There's also a ThreeToe story that mentions drunk dwarves.  And several ASCII art rewards.

If you're looking for canon, it's that dwarves get drunk and have enlarged livers.  There's no nerdtastic fantasy-biology going on.

Can I design creatures who's brains/nerves *will* heal? Or is that being hardcoded?

It's not hardcoded.  You can do this by giving their brain/nerve tissue the HEALING_RATE tag.

1. Building materials aside, whether made out of wood or stone or glass or steel, will it be harder to get through a Masterwork door than it will one without any quality levels?

And 2. Will there be a separation in quality levels between items with higher artistic/aesthetic value, and ones with better structural design?

Will there be the ability to make choices about, or between, form and function, when our dwarfs are creating something?

In other words, will the game recognise a difference between a pretty letter opener, and a tough survival knife, each with the same potential selling value, and each made with the same level of skill?

If you're asking about the next version, it won't differ from the current version in any of these aspects.

[Neonivek]

That's Nerdtastic Footkerchief!

So another day of Toady catching up to the hundreds of messages he was sent.

Though the Ark Project seems to be at pause for an unknown period of time.

[Sean Mirrsen]

There's already a sort of a distinction between aesthetic and structural quality. For example, a well-made sword is valuable exactly because it's well-made. It's well-balanced, strong, and perfectly polished. A sub-par sword can have similar value if it's sufficiently improved - engraved, encrusted, etc.

I don't think the notion of "aesthetically pleasing shape" is going to appear in any near future, but it's definetly possible with just RAW definitions. It'd blow up the item definitions though. There'd be several dozen, quite likely more, shape and appearance definitions. For every item, there are certain fixed qualities you can assign - size, length, blockiness, roundness, smoothness/roughness, straight/curved/wavy/jagged lines, reflectivity, transparency, anything else you can think of. Each creature would have certain ranges of preferences, which would determine both what things the creature likes, and what things it does. Hobbits like things small and round, for example, so a door or a tunnel made by a hobbit would likely be small and round. Their swords would likely be similar, and thus not too effective. Dwarven swords would most definetly be straight, broad and pointy, but may be a touch short. Human swords will be long and straight. Elven swords are long and thin. But since these would all be ranges, there could be some dwarves that like long things. Or humans that like curved swords. Or elves that like axes.

These descriptors would then have to flood out into a completely different concept, specifically an "item class". You'd have an axe class, a sword class, a door class, but within all these classes, the game would assign labels itself. Human swords would be like longswords. Dwarven swords like cleavers or cutlasses. Elven swords like katanas. The game would assign these items names based on how they look, but these would also have to be defined by the RAWs. If you have a "shortsword" class, then a curved variant would be called a kukri. A wavy dagger could be called a kris.

Then again, it's entirely possible for the game to call items its own names. Especially in the case of artifacts, which could completely ignore conventions in regards to making items.

[G-Flex]

The difference between aesthetic value and other value is still fairly important though, I think.

Let me put it this way: If real life worked like Dwarf Fortress, the best piece of artwork you could place in a room would be an extremely expensive computer in a beige case. Since the game doesn't keep track of whether the value of an item comes from its aesthetic/decorative value, or from function or something else, ridiculous things like that end up happening, where there's no reason to use statues for decoration instead of stonefall traps or animal traps or what-have-you.

[Neonivek]

Though there is a value in value

A lot of what the extremely wealthy do is express their wealth not through function or aestetics but through price (though I guess you could say they are paying for the experience).

Though perhaps I am being a bit unfair to the wealthy because most people with spending money do it even if they don't realise.

[G-Flex]

That may be true, but it still stands that value can come from different aspects of something's construction, and that aesthetic value is only one of them.

The same goes for materials, too, really. A stone being high-value because of its usefulness as, say, a smelting flux, doesn't mean it's any nicer to look at.

[Neonivek]

True in order for value to have value itself it needs to have no use.

Something valuable because it is useful (like computers) isn't really in the same category as lets say a large rock

[CobaltKobold]

a large shiny rock

[JoystickHero]

Though there is a value in value

Close. There is value in demand, and value in scarcity.

[SirHoneyBadger]

Though there is a value in value

A lot of what the extremely wealthy do is express their wealth not through function or aestetics but through price (though I guess you could say they are paying for the experience).

Though perhaps I am being a bit unfair to the wealthy because most people with spending money do it even if they don't realise.

That has something to do with trends, though. This could be expressed in the game by the most popular, famous, and/or important (doesn't have to be the same thing!) dwarf, influencing the tastes of those around him/her. If Urist Presley likes olivine, then other dwarfs will begin to like it too.

If another dwarf admires, say, troglodytes, for their hairiness (or whatever), then that dwarf may begin to change her tastes to other general troglodyte likes/dislikes. May become a troglophile, in other words.

Yet another dwarf who hates elves, may begin collecting elf bones, wooden sculptures, axes, etc., not because those things are what that dwarf likes/dislikes, in and of themselves, but because they are extended representations of that dwarf's tastes.

On the other hand, a dwarf that does not hate elves, but that has witnessed a battle between elves and dwarfs, may collect the same things for different reasons--in this case as reminders not to hate, and where hatred may lead. That collection may in time become the seed of a museum that other dwarfs-or even elves-may visit.

[mendonca]

Urist Presley

You aint nothing but a beak dog .... crying all the time ...

sorry

[lordcooper]

Urist Presley

You aint nothing but a beak dog .... crying all the time ...

sorry

*Groans*

[Footkerchief]

You ain't never snatched a baby and you ain't no friend of mine.

[SirHoneyBadger]

Har.
 
De.

Har.

Har...

[JoshuaFH]

Man, great idea: You know how dwarves will have preferences and like certain stones and metals and such? It'd be cool if there was some census-type mechanism that recorded the likes and dislikes of every dwarf/human in a kingdom and used that to plot the demand and price scales for trading purposes.