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[Rysith]

Now, who's trolling?

Look at his avatar. Of course he's trolling. Just ignore him.

[thvaz]

Now, who's trolling?

Look at his avatar. Of course he's trolling. Just ignore him.

Heh, I had user's avatars turned off. But you can't judge someone by the looks only.

[Rockphed]

The thing here is that it's very hard to implement this stuff easily, I think.   Especially since A:  The game should, I feel, only tell you what has been discovered about some object- like Adamantine.   Likewise, there's like a zillion objects in the game, and I'd rather have Toady working on the game then in-game descriptions for 'em right now.   For the time being, at least.

The thing is, I wasn't suggesting writing all of that stuff out more than once each.  I was thinking that DwarfFort would look at the item type and put up a statement about it.  Things like, "Stone is used to make furniture and blocks at the mason's workshop, build crude walls and buildings, and make Crafts at the Craftsdwarf's Workshop,"  would be inserted into the '?' screen brought up by selecting any stone.  If the stone is used in a reaction, then it would be mentioned in the next paragraph.  Currently pressing [enter] while selecting a stone with the 'k' command brings up exactly that list of reactions that use the stone or bar.  In fact, you can then look at what else is required for the reaction by pressing [enter] while selecting the specific reaction.  The problem is that none of this is currently easy to figure out for newbies.  If every screen had a '?' with "help" next to it at the lower right corner of the screen, it would be much easier for new players to think, "I have no idea what is going on, but there is a friendly help command, so I can possibly get some more information."

On the other hand, just including a text-file with my suggested description for every item type would allow somebody to quickly go find a simple description of whatever they are looking at.  They would just need to know that it was there.  Good descriptions of all the screens and what to do with them would also be nice.  The great thing about the text file is that Toady just needs to put, "For more information, see Help.doc in the Dwarf Fortress folder," in the help system in game.  The other great thing is that we, being the community, can write it instead of burdening Toady with it.

[PMantix]

The other great thing is that we, being the community, can write it instead of burdening Toady with it.

I think that is a great idea. Instead of having to burden Toady away from 'real' development, all he would do is just put the ground work in for a more robust help system that can be editted in game by the player. Then dozens of players can contribute to the help file which could then be downloaded later just like the graphical tilesets.




I disagree that there should not be some sort of in game tutorial or help system. The community based stuff is great when you are part of the community, but those players that have gotten that far aren't the concern of this thread. The real point is to try and find ways to catch as many of the people that aren't staying as possible. It's improving DF first impression that will get the most new players playing and staying, and that means having the instructions more closely associated with the software. You can't expect most players to put in the extra effort just to figure out what they are looking at and doing.

[codezero]

Somewhat offtopic stuff concerning the placeholder debate

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

... It would be the work of five minutes to nerf crossbows out of being deadly chainguns but these things that are in the player's interest are largely orthogonal to the things the devs want to toy around with.

Applying tensile strength this and density that to every material in the game does not alter gameplay one bit ... bla bla bla

This is the irony of your viewpoint, instead of taking '5 minutes' to change how deadly a bow is, he's (at least potentially) based it on the tensile strength of the bow. And not only that, it's been applied consistently throughout the entire world. Imagine if he'd taken your idea and said bowdamage = 5 , crossbowdamage = 7 , TreeSnapsinaHurricane = 231... The idea of programming is to get the computer to do the work.

Why would you go to the lengths of making 'beards' be wrestleable against dwarves when you can actually give the dwarf a beard and hence it will be wrestleable (among other things). That's how these basic building blocks can interact to form something a lot more vivid.

[tourettedog]

I was thinking that DwarfFort would look at the item type and put up a statement about it....

What about cleaning up the movie interface -- or establishing a link between the current in-game help system and movie files -- and having some DF-movie based tutorials for major features?  Use the note feature to display tutorial text, and you could have some decent in-game video help using pretty much existing tools (and requiring little coding).

Linking the help files to the movies might take a little effort, but again the movies could come from volunteers.

<ObGripe>and add more late-game content to keep them interested once they've gotten a handle on the early part.</ObGripe>

Of course he's trolling.

Even trolls can make good points.

[thvaz]

Even trolls can make good points.

He has some good points; his attitude just isn't helping.

[Sowelu]

I think I'm going to take that "help files for all items" thing and run with it.  See you in the suggestions forum.

[Footkerchief]

This is the irony of your viewpoint, instead of taking '5 minutes' to change how deadly a bow is, he's (at least potentially) based it on the tensile strength of the bow. And not only that, it's been applied consistently throughout the entire world. Imagine if he'd taken your idea and said bowdamage = 5 , crossbowdamage = 7 , TreeSnapsinaHurricane = 231... The idea of programming is to get the computer to do the work.

Why would you go to the lengths of making 'beards' be wrestleable against dwarves when you can actually give the dwarf a beard and hence it will be wrestleable (among other things). That's how these basic building blocks can interact to form something a lot more vivid.

The discussing-in-spoilers thing isn't considered kosher anymore.

I'm going to have to disagree.  The current ranged weapons are probably the least defensible placeholder in the game.  Like farming, they're hopelessly broken, but unlike farming, they can't even be modded properly (unless you mod them out entirely, which I often do).  Even the quickest and dirtiest of updates -- changing the rate-of-fire cap or skill multiplier or exponential constant or whatever to, what, 1/5 of its current value? -- would improve Fortress Mode combat by an embarrassingly disproportionate amount.

I can't wait for crossbows that properly take their base material and quality (and raws numbers) into account for accuracy, projectile speed, rate of fire, and so on.  And I understand the principle of not wasting time on elaborate placeholders.  But this is situation where there's a single integer constant somewhere in the source, and it's the wrong integer and it just needs 5 seconds of TLC.  Or you know, a day's worth of basic overhaul for projectile weapons, even if that means one additional day before release.

[thvaz]

The discussing-in-spoilers thing isn't considered kosher anymore.

I'm going to have to disagree.  The current ranged weapons are probably the least defensible placeholder in the game.  Like farming, they're hopelessly broken, but unlike farming, they can't even be modded properly (unless you mod them out entirely, which I often do).  Even the quickest and dirtiest of updates -- changing the rate-of-fire cap or skill multiplier or exponential constant or whatever to, what, 1/5 of its current value? -- would improve Fortress Mode combat by an embarrassingly disproportionate amount.

I can't wait for crossbows that properly take their base material and quality (and raws numbers) into account for accuracy, projectile speed, rate of fire, and so on.  And I understand the principle of not wasting time on elaborate placeholders.  But this is situation where there's a single integer constant somewhere in the source, and it's the wrong integer and it just needs 5 seconds of TLC.  Or you know, a day's worth of basic overhaul for projectile weapons, even if that means one additional day before release.

Won't something about ranged combat change in the next updade anyway? AFAIK, bone bolts won't break through iron armor anymore, for example.

[Neonivek]

I really think that a lot of the tutorials and wiki stuff are fine the way they are now- a product of the community.

Uhhh... Well I have yet to check the Tutorial you play (Which so far is alright, it just takes quite a bit of work)... The Tutorial you watch however is sporatic and often requires a new player to watch them all with repeat of information comming constantly making its use for a new player somewhat limited and offputting (Though it does a much MUCH better job then the wiki at explaining Machines and any new player who watches it all will get a lot of the information they need to play)

A Playable Tutorial within Dwarf Fortress would be more prefered for the basics while Player Tutorials could be more focused on deeper elements of strategy to bring that player to the next level.

Or rather... If it was Adventure mode the Game Tutorial will teach you how to fight, the Player Tutorial will teach you how to take down a Megabeast.

[ToonyMan]

ASCII graphics rock.  Only problem is that it's not very challenging or surprising anymore.  Some more AWESOME challenges would be well recieved.  Like having a sort of pre-made outpost to defend against 200 goblins in one year or something.

[Footkerchief]

Won't something about ranged combat change in the next updade anyway? AFAIK, bone bolts won't break through iron armor anymore, for example.

Yeah, and the new body system will prevent bolts from piercing every organ in your chest at once, etc.  So they'll be nerfed to some extent.  They'll still look really goofy in action though.

[change name please]

Somewhat offtopic stuff concerning the placeholder debate

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This is the irony of your viewpoint, instead of taking '5 minutes' to change how deadly a bow is, he's (at least potentially) based it on the tensile strength of the bow. And not only that, it's been applied consistently throughout the entire world. Imagine if he'd taken your idea and said bowdamage = 5 , crossbowdamage = 7 , TreeSnapsinaHurricane = 231... The idea of programming is to get the computer to do the work.

Why would you go to the lengths of making 'beards' be wrestleable against dwarves when you can actually give the dwarf a beard and hence it will be wrestleable (among other things). That's how these basic building blocks can interact to form something a lot more vivid.

The problem is that with an application as resource-hungry as Dwarf Fortress it becomes important to know at what point the idea of programming is not to get the computer to do the work.  Again, we're seeing the tragedy of the Universal Constructor idea - the idea that, once every in-game item being affected by every possible in-game variable, the rest of the guts are just cake and will write themselves.  You mention bow damage being "at least potentially" based on tensile strength - the UC idea is all potential and no results, and for the player's empirical experience, not really any different from the manual shortcut (which is also likely to be much less CPU-taxing).

When will there be enough groundwork?  How is a tensile strength 300 sword against a shearing resistance 100 iron plate empirically any different from a +2 sword vs base iron plate?  Will layers eventually have to be replaced by voxels? 

[Footkerchief]

Again, we're seeing the tragedy of the Universal Constructor idea - the idea that, once every in-game item being affected by every possible in-game variable, the rest of the guts are just cake and will write themselves.

This would have been an extremely relevant and timely criticism maybe 7 years ago before Toady caught on that Armok was floundering for more or less this reason.

resource-hungry, CPU-taxing 

Could you provide some more details about the comparative memory footprints of whatever data structures you have in mind (leaving aside the fact that DF rarely uses more than 500 MB), or how the new tissue interactions are going to affect CPU usage?