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[Footkerchief]

I also don't see "Priest", which is weird. Could have sworn we were getting those dudes again, even if they didn't do anything special., though maybe I just misunderstood

Those are the dwarf entity positions.  They don't have priests in the current version either.

And what do you mean about the Hammerer being busted? That's just a temporary thing, right?

Yes, he said "hammerer item is currently busted" (my emphasis).

Question about adamantine weapons.

If you wanted to make an adamantine hammer,  you could make a hollow adamantine shell and fill it with molten lead.  This would be a very effective weapon!  Will we be able to do anything like this in the foreseeable future?

I could have sworn this exact idea came up before, but I couldn't find much.  Anyway, it basically depends on whether/when Toady implements a system for multi-component or multi-material items.  The quote below is about armor made of both leather and metal, but the challenges are mostly the same, so it's relevant:

There's some trickiness with items that are actually made from multiple materials.  Things like studding aren't as much of a problem, since the "improvements" on leather items can handle this.  But a lot of the in-game items should actually have several materials just for their basic structure, and it becomes harder to account for them.  Armok I played with making items up from components, but that was sort of a mess.  On the other hand, I'd want to avoid going through all the hassles of fully respecting a half-leather/half-metal item (with respect to things like weight and temperature effects) if I'm just going to flesh it out more later.  So, I dunno.  I have to think more about what items will be like if I change it.  Something like how it keeps track of threads and dyes might work for quite a long time (I think you can change the material of a bucket handle right now for instance), but certain items really don't have one main material, which is the problem.

[Aqizzar]

I didn't see the Philosopher...did they get cut as well?

Urist McPeasant cancels point and laugh at Philosopher - Philosopher no longer exists.

Philosopher cancels job: abstractualize existence: interrupted by personal nonexistence.

[CobaltKobold]

Meaningless or not, it seems deeply wrong to have lieutenants above captains.  I guess they're more like lieutenant generals.

He he he, yeah, I'm aware of the typical military ranks.  I do not know how they hold up in antiquity.  These are the "trusted lieutenants" of the general, which occur oftentimes in literature, etc.  It's not exactly a rank here.  And the captains are the captains of squads.  It can be changed by those it bothers, but I'm not inclined to do so.

According to etymonline, for lieutenant, "Specific military sense of "officer next in rank to a captain" is from 1570s" which is...not period! (i.e. Toady's fine here)

And to whoever asked it: Milking creatures is not yet said to be in, no.

[Thndr]

Question about adamantine weapons.

If you wanted to make an adamantine hammer,  you could make a hollow adamantine shell and fill it with molten lead.  This would be a very effective weapon!  Will we be able to do anything like this in the foreseeable future?

Why hollow out adamantine when you could just cover existing weapons with adamantine shells/casts! Hell, this solves the wrestler's problem of not having a weapon, just cover his skin in an adamantine cast! He'll never break a bone again, and if he does, he's already wearing a cast! Doubles a medical devices! If you call now, we'll throw in a second one free of charge, just pay shipping and processing!

Spoilerish Question

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Are the random beasts always the type of critter thats aggresive/harmful? Or could there be a bronze rabbit or other mostly harmless creature that spawns? Or even tameable critters? (Like an adamantine female cat that spawns more adamantine cats)
Not entirely sure how the random material/part critters work, probably answered earlier in thread.

[Footkerchief]

Meaningless or not, it seems deeply wrong to have lieutenants above captains.  I guess they're more like lieutenant generals.

He he he, yeah, I'm aware of the typical military ranks.  I do not know how they hold up in antiquity.  These are the "trusted lieutenants" of the general, which occur oftentimes in literature, etc.  It's not exactly a rank here.  And the captains are the captains of squads.  It can be changed by those it bothers, but I'm not inclined to do so.

According to etymonline, for lieutenant, "Specific military sense of "officer next in rank to a captain" is from 1570s" which is...not period! (i.e. Toady's fine here)

Yeah, I know "lieutenant" is traditionally a generic term like "deputy."  That's most of what's bothering me here -- the position is just called "lieutenant," which is really ambiguous if you don't have context (or prior knowledge) to understand that they're lieutenants to a general.  They could be a lieutenant governor, or a lieutenant to the militia commander, or of course a lieutenant to the army/militia captain.  In the absence of context, the typical player will assume they're below a captain.

To put it succinctly, the term's being used in a nonstandard specific way, rather than a standard specific way or a generic way.  And I don't see any tags that would force the game to provide sufficient context e.g. "Lieutenant to General So-and-So."  Oh well, guess I'll mod it.

Anyway, other entity positions stuff: adding KILL_QUEST to every single position should be entertaining.  Also, the SQUAD and SPOUSE tags are interesting -- presumably they create new entity positions that can't be customized (except for that MENIAL_WORK_EXEMPTION_SPOUSE).  Also, I guess the soldiers under direct command of generals/lieutenants are like bodyguards or something.

Spoilerish Question

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Are the random beasts always the type of critter thats aggresive/harmful? Or could there be a bronze rabbit or other mostly harmless creature that spawns? Or even tameable critters? (Like an adamantine female cat that spawns more adamantine cats)
Not entirely sure how the random material/part critters work, probably answered earlier in thread.

Spoiler: answer (click to show/hide)

This came up in DF Talk 3, and the answer is yes, you can get benign titans.  The transcript mentions a "happy big shrimp."  But, like megabeasts, they won't reproduce.  I doubt they're tamable.

[CobaltKobold]

Ah. Yes, knowing in whose place (lieu) the position-holder stands (tenant) would be good.

[dAGNARUS]

Would it be possible to discover a cavern of several z-levels deep with automatically respawning monsters in it, and then channel a river into said cavern so that not only everyone will drown but there will be an infinite respawn of those creatures, immediately drowning before they even get the chance to open their eyes? This would make a great leather/bone/anything else supply.

[Neonivek]

Would it be possible to discover a cavern of several z-levels deep with automatically respawning monsters in it, and then channel a river into said cavern so that not only everyone will drown but there will be an infinite respawn of those creatures, immediately drowning before they even get the chance to open their eyes? This would make a great leather/bone/anything else supply.

The answer, if Toady did his job, is no I believe.

[Footkerchief]

Would it be possible to discover a cavern of several z-levels deep with automatically respawning monsters in it, and then channel a river into said cavern so that not only everyone will drown but there will be an infinite respawn of those creatures, immediately drowning before they even get the chance to open their eyes? This would make a great leather/bone/anything else supply.

The answer, if Toady did his job, is no I believe.

Yeah, I concur -- the game already has to figure out where it can spawn creatures at all, (i.e., not in solid rock), so it would be obvious (and straightforward) to add a check for water/magma.

Additionally, it would be pretty difficult to keep the cavern flooded while simultaneously harvesting bone from it.

[Hondo]

Would it be possible to discover a cavern of several z-levels deep with automatically respawning monsters in it, and then channel a river into said cavern so that not only everyone will drown but there will be an infinite respawn of those creatures, immediately drowning before they even get the chance to open their eyes? This would make a great leather/bone/anything else supply.

I believe the monsters spawn from the map edges, so your water would drain away.

[Razzums]

Any hope for a release before February?

[Neonivek]

Any hope for a release before February?

It is probably the same chance that aliens will decend from the sky and use their super intelligence and computers to write the rest of the codes for the percise reason that this is the only way it could happen.

Well ok I GUESS Toady in the future could have got his hands on a time machine and went back to the past with he next version in his hands with the intent of giving it to Toady.

OR Toady could be a liar and had the next version finished the whole time and is egging the community for donations while enjoying an extended vacation.

All of those are situations where the game could be released before February.

[Footkerchief]

Any hope for a release before February?

No:

Estimated time when the release could come?
February 16th - March 14th

My Perdiction Week of Release
February 23rd -March 2nd

Perdition day of Release
Febuary 27th

Totaku's estimates looked pretty good.  It's not like it's going to be out in a week or something, but it won't take forever either.  There really are a lot of requests and miscellaneous items that have accumulated over the last more-than-a-year (hundreds of them), and I've just got to order these and decide what must go in and what's out this time.

[dreiche2]

Hm, as far as I understand, people are arguing that a more elastic armour would be better against blunt weapons than a hard one. Could someone explain to me why that would be the case, both under the new system in DF and in real life?

Shouldn't a hard shell be better as long as it doesn't break? I mean, as far as I can see the advantage of a bullet-proof vest spreading out the impact by being elastic is just that hard materials of similar weight would simply break and let the bullet through.

And even then, when we speak about actual armour penetration, the advantage of a chain mail would rather come about against piercing weapons, not blunt weapons?

Or am I overlooking something?

[Mel_Vixen]

Actually for stuff like the Adamantine/Lead hammer,the Mail/leather shirt, reinforced wooden shields or just plain lined boots a system very similiar to the bodys-plans and tissues sh/could work.

A short uneducated look at the issue:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Tags like [BODY:Humanoid] should enable a armor type only for humanoids.

The shirt would have a base layer of leather with mail/scales over it on the torso (upper and lower Body), the shoulders and the arms so we would need a Armor detail plan similiar to this (from the body_detail_plan_default.txt) :

[BODY_DETAIL_PLAN:VERTEBRATE_TISSUE_LAYERS]
    [BP_LAYERS:BY_CATEGORY:BODY:ARG1:2:ARG2:1:ARG3:1]
    [BP_LAYERS:BY_CATEGORY:BODY_UPPER:ARG1:2:ARG2:1:ARG3:1]
[...]

maybe in this fashion:

[ARMOR_DETAIL_PLAN:Padded_Scalemale]
    [Armor_LAYERS:BY_CATEGORY:BODY:Scales:2:Padding:1]
    [Armor_LAYERS:BY_CATEGORY:BODY_UPPER:Scales:2:Paddig:1]
[....]


The tissues  would need some tags for any Metal (for scales) and any leather (the padding.)