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Single Giant library workroom. Takes a bit of set-up but once done is done.

90 (40%)

Specific Library sections. Books are in the library and the menu is managable.

111 (49.3%)

Generic library sections with free floating books. Messy, but flexible.

19 (8.4%)

Other: Describe (keep in mind the limits of modding)

5 (2.2%)

Total Members Voted: 224

[Mephansteras]

Yeah, it'll be a bit. Lots of stuff to look at and incorporate.

[Mephansteras]

Progress is good. Got a lot of stuff integrated already, but there is still a lot left to do. Should be able to make Alchemy a bit less clunky now, which is nice. And the new mineral distributions should make the various Tempered Crystals a lot more useful (like they were back in 40d).

Debating whether I want to keep the Oil Press in or just use what Toady has for pressing oil nuts. Might move those jobs over to the press, but we'll see.

Also, Dyansauri now get eggs! Fun! Currently debating whether or not to give them some feathers as well. Hmmm. I wonder how they'd react to nest boxes if you play them in fortress mode. Might need to try that out.

The various egg laying primitive civs will get updated as well, of course.

Once I've got version 2.4 out I'll start working on adding in the various inks and papers and libraries and such.

[Morrigi]

What's happening with this thing?

[Mephansteras]

I'm working on it. It's going pretty well, but the revamp of Alchemy to use the new container syntax is taking a bit.

My goal is to get it finished up this weekend and to have a release sometime early next week.

[Mephansteras]

Status update: Got a lot of work done over the weekend, mostly in the vein of getting Alchemy to work better. We should have functioning Acids now, which I'll be testing out tonight! We certainly have jars working correctly as containers.

Still not sure about whether we need the transport tubes workaround or not. I'll find that out soon, although I suspect that merchants still won't bring new stuff that isn't metal.

Current goal is the same. I'm planning on having a mostly complete version done tonight that I can start major testing on. Depending on how well that goes I'll have a release sometime this week.

[Mephansteras]

Making good progress. Alchemy seems to be working pretty well now and you can bring the various alchemical powders along with you at embark. No luck on the various acids and elixirs in that department, but it should be good enough trade-wise that I can ditch the clumsy transport tube workaround. Still needs a bit more testing, but that's what I'm leaning towards at the moment.

Going to be doing another test fort tonight that should be pretty much complete. All the major changes are done at least, so it'll be down to bug fixes.

One slight change: The Tempered Crystals now use a product called a Crystal Seed to form. You can get Crystal Seed by processing rough or cut Rock Crystal gems at the alchemist's lab. Basically I did that so that you can order rock crystals for trade and use them for the crystals if you're on a metal-poor map that doesn't have the crystals on-site. Especially if you happen to have cinnabar/cobaltite on-site.

[Jeoshua]

RE: the question in the title:

I don't think most dinosaurs had feathers.  Many did, but most probably only had a kind of proto-feather... basically more like a scale than a feather, but jutting off the body.

The real question is: Are the Dyansauri Therapod based or Sauropod based? I believe the common scientific knowledge is that Therapods had the feather-like structures, while Sauropod skin was far more elephantine.

[Mephansteras]

They are definitely therapod based. Which is why I'm considering it. They're also fairly large, though, and I know not all therapods are thought to have had feathers.

The real question, I suppose, is whether we think it would enhance them or detract from them?

[Jeoshua]

Maybe give them feathers as "hair" on their heads... http://www.artdinouveau.com/feathered/velociraptor-mongoliensis1.jpg

^ That's what I mean about protofeathers.

GOD that picture creeps me out.  Gigantic killer chicken or something,

[Mephansteras]

That is pretty creepy.

I was thinking something along the lines of a feathered crest and maybe feathers on the tail.

[Thundercraft]

GOD that picture creeps me out.  Gigantic killer chicken or something,

I think it's vaguely suggestive of a mutant or gremlin version of Big Bird. (Don't feed Big Bird after midnight!)

[Morrigi]

They are definitely therapod based. Which is why I'm considering it. They're also fairly large, though, and I know not all therapods are thought to have had feathers.

The real question, I suppose, is whether we think it would enhance them or detract from them?

Velociraptors definitely had feathers and the common belief is that the possibly 160 pound deinonychus as seen here also did. In my opinion it would fundamentally change the way one would look at them if the dyansauri were given feathers, but definitely not for the worse. It's a healthy dose of realism and while a technologically advanced humanoid dinosaur with feathers and all would be a very bizarre image, it would also just be plain awesome.

[Scaraban]

They are definitely therapod based. Which is why I'm considering it. They're also fairly large, though, and I know not all therapods are thought to have had feathers.

The real question, I suppose, is whether we think it would enhance them or detract from them?

Velociraptors definitely had feathers and the common belief is that the possibly 160 pound deinonychus as seen here also did. In my opinion it would fundamentally change the way one would look at them if the dyansauri were given feathers, but definitely not for the worse. It's a healthy dose of realism and while a technologically advanced humanoid dinosaur with feathers and all would be a very bizarre image, it would also just be plain awesome.

The boy speaks truth.

[Jeoshua]

You could make them "look" more humanoid by making sure there are no feathers on the face, specifically.  Frills on the head sound really good  Maybe you could make a caste system where there are "Leader" types, very rare, but very powerful.  1 in 1000 births would be a leader type, and the main thing separating them would be their higher strength and toughness and their massive "Mane" of feathers.  This kind of thing actually happens in the animal kingdom, too.  Look at Lions.  Big Mane = Tough dude.

[Mephansteras]

Hmmm. That's an interesting idea.

Now...how do we want to go with this? Should males have the bright colors and females be brown or drab? Probably not, since their predators and not prey. I might let them be brightly colored, even though I doubt they would be from an evolutionary standpoint.

Other question is whether or not the females should be larger than the males.


In modding progress news, I've run into some odd bugs that I'm trying to work out. For some reason some reactions are giving me the results I expect and others are giving me 150x what I expect. I just had a test fort produce 150 Void Crystal Bars from a single reaction last night. Nice, I suppose, since the only metal on site is Tetrahedrite. But not exactly what I was going for. So I'm trying to figure out what is going on there.

Also, you may notice that world-gen populations are a bit wonky. The various carnivorous races, like the Dyansauri, had to be set to [NO_EAT] to keep them from all starving by year 4. So now they regularly get empires with over 100K citizens while everyone else is lucky to have 10k. Shouldn't effect Fortress mode too much, but it might make Adventure mode a bit wonky.

I might need to make an Adventure Mode friendly version with some tweaks to it.