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[Rainseeker]

I'm going to ask this here because I know you guys want to hear the calibur of question I'm going to be asking Toady:

Is magnetite armor going to be picking up silverware in the dining room when the restaurant arc is complete?

[Neonivek]

I'm going to ask this here because I know you guys want to hear the calibur of question I'm going to be asking Toady:

Is magnetite armor going to be picking up silverware in the dining room when the restaurant arc is complete?

I believe the answer is no since magnetic reactions are complicated (Magnets don't attract metal exactly). Add on that there is no Restaurant Arc

So you may want to refine your question to asking Toady if there will be magnets. I know there is no Restaurant Arc though, but you probably meant when he works on dining so make sure you refer to Dining not as an arc.

[Zengief]

I'm going to ask this here because I know you guys want to hear the calibur of question I'm going to be asking Toady:

Is magnetite armor going to be picking up silverware in the dining room when the restaurant arc is complete?

I believe the answer is no since magnetic reactions are complicated (Magnets don't attract metal exactly). Add on that there is no Restaurant Arc

I am pretty sure Rainseeker was trying to lighten the heavy mood of the questions since he is one of the people who will be interviewing Toady.  In that vein:
If I put a bag of seeds in my cabinet made from blocks of water, can I grow some hydroponic veggies?

Also, will the Scamps Demi-God have just one set of claws or 2?

Do the megabeasts mate and reproduce? Why not? It might lead to interesting variations

[Rainseeker]

I'm going to ask this here because I know you guys want to hear the calibur of question I'm going to be asking Toady:

Is magnetite armor going to be picking up silverware in the dining room when the restaurant arc is complete?

I believe the answer is no since magnetic reactions are complicated (Magnets don't attract metal exactly). Add on that there is no Restaurant Arc

I am pretty sure Rainseeker was trying to lighten the heavy mood of the questions since he is one of the people who will be interviewing Toady.  In that vein:
If I put a bag of seeds in my cabinet made from blocks of water, can I grow some hydroponic veggies?

Also, will the Scamps Demi-God have just one set of claws or 2?

Do the megabeasts mate and reproduce? Why not? It might lead to interesting variations

Yes, my question was thoroughly tongue-in-cheek. 

[Rainseeker]

Do the megabeasts mate and reproduce? Why not? It might lead to interesting variations

I actually kind of like this question.  Though it would probably never happen in fortress mode, it might make sense in world gen.  Although, it would only take two dragons to have babies that eventually make a world populated ONLY by dragons.  Or hydras.  Or giant bunny-headed cow-hoofed tentacled monstrocities. 

[Mr.Person]

Why is Zach writing stories with less frequency? Is he taking longer to write them, doing something else instead, or does he just not like writing them?

[Kuromimi505]

Would you consider making DF a low-cost shareware? Many independent programmers are, would this allow you to work on your DF project much more and eliminate other distractions in your life if DF made you money? Older version free, current version $3, all upcoming versions until a major update $10, lifetime membership $XX?

Personally I would very much support DF becoming non-freeware if it would let you work on DF more.

And I'll second this question:

Overly verbose questions from Aqizzar-

Weird business on the forum has been a recurring distraction.  Without going into future plans or recriminations, how do you view the membership your forum has attracted?  Or Dwarf Fortress' whole audience?

Does forum management and dealing with flame wars distract you from working on DF?

[G-Flex]

I'm going to ask this here because I know you guys want to hear the calibur of question I'm going to be asking Toady:

Is magnetite armor going to be picking up silverware in the dining room when the restaurant arc is complete?

I believe the answer is no since magnetic reactions are complicated (Magnets don't attract metal exactly). Add on that there is no Restaurant Arc

So you may want to refine your question to asking Toady if there will be magnets. I know there is no Restaurant Arc though, but you probably meant when he works on dining so make sure you refer to Dining not as an arc.

I believe it was a joke.

[Fieari]

Would you consider making DF a low-cost shareware? Many independent programmers are, would this allow you to work on your DF project much more and eliminate other distractions in your life if DF made you money? Older version free, current version $3, all upcoming versions until a major update $10, lifetime membership $XX?

Personally I would very much support DF becoming non-freeware if it would let you work on DF more.

You do realize that coding DF is Toady's fulltime job, and that DF is not shareware but donationware... and yet it still earns him enough to pay the bills.  He publishes all his financial records too-- check out the announcements forum.  I'm pretty sure he earns more than I do at my technical support desk job.

[Tamren]

When will we see the ability to control buildable Z-levels?
In other words, having an init option that counts the number of levels generated above/below Z that are build able. Aboveground levels would just be empty sky, but for below ground levels the game would need to generate new stone layers.

Currently you get 15 build able levels above the highest point and below the lowest point. If you could control this you could set surface build able levels to something like 60 and be able to build a massive 60 level tower. Alternately you could modify the below ground build able levels. In which case you could dig out a giant cathedral or something underground.

[Im_Sparks]

Is there going to be an arena room at any point, where you can organize fights and make dwarves get a happy thought for watching/winning?

I'd like this.

[Areyar]

just designate the arenafloor a barracks, sparring is plenty deadly as it stands.
and if you designate the viewing galleries as meetingspace, with plenty of expensive stuff and waterfall entries, happy thoughts for everyone!

[Im_Sparks]

just designate the arenafloor a barracks, sparring is plenty deadly as it stands.
and if you designate the viewing galleries as meetingspace, with plenty of expensive stuff and waterfall entries, happy thoughts for everyone!

Ugh. No.

Sparring isn't very.. It isn't very...
Arena-like. It's just two dwarves fighting in the confines of their bedroom. I want an arena with a pit that you can designate animals to be released in.

[TheDJ17]

I heard Toady mention something about arenas in the last pod cast, it sounded like he wanted to put them in somehow.

[Digitalghost]

Hey Toady,

I noticed in the podcast you mentioned Upper Confidence bounds applied to Trees (UCT) search.  Since using UCT on board games is a part of my PhD research, I have to ask:

Using a reinforcement learning algorithm like UCT, it would be possible to search into the future and produce more intelligent behavior (for example, you might find out that every time the goblin raiders move into the top entrance of the player fortress, they get trapped and flooded, so choose the other entrance).  The challenge is that you would probably have to simulate futures of the world while the current world is playing in realtime (for UCT) or you would have to learn from replaying past mistakes (for something like Q-learning), both of which take a lot of processor and memory.  Do you think that learning algorithms have a place in Dwarf Fortress, and are you pursuing anything along those lines?

As an aside, it would rock if you opened up some kind of API so people could script machine learning algorithms into DF, but that's probably really hard to do at this stage of development.