Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[G-Flex]

I don't know. I mean, breaks from historical reality are obviously okay if they're actually justified. Of course, "justified" means more than saying "well, they could have done it if they had the knowledge" because that pretty much means anything is fair game. I just noticed that plaster casts as we think of them haven't been around for very long, but I know that Toady doesn't like to venture too far into anachronistic territory.

[Hummingbird]

How do you see all the changes in the game as regards wounds and health care affecting Adventurer mode?  Will I still be able to instantly recover from almost any wound by traveling, or would I have to seek real care in a town for the more severe, category-red wounds?  Also, would I be able to recruit "medic"-type sidekicks who could provide some of these kinds of services without having to travel back to a town?

[Goberfish]

Will different types of soap have different effects for cleaning? Such as smells or efficiency or something?

[Faces of Mu]

-Answered-

How has the "Dwarfs remain inside" functionality been changed for this next release? What will it look like in the future?

[Footkerchief]

How has the "Dwarfs remain inside" functionality been changed for this next release? What will it look like in the future?

It's been replaced with burrows.

06/17/2009: So somebody asked if it's possible to use civilians for jobs and so on while the alert is on, in the zone to which they've been restricted. I was originally thinking more of shorter alerts where you just wanted to get them away from someplace dangerous while you fought something out. However, while I was working on it, I decided I might as well make it more diverse, so I put in burrows.

The ill-named burrows are larger sections of your fortress where dwarves live and work and to which you can restrict their movements. Dwarves can be assigned to multiple burrows, and you can paint them with your mouse in a few brush sizes or lay them out in multiple rectangles (a burrow need not be a rectangle). Any number of burrows can overlap and you can give them names and an ASCII symbol.

Dwarves will only use workshops, stockpiles, living areas, meeting halls, etc. in the burrows to which they are assigned. I've removed all of the "entrance dance" code so that they can survive the mental trauma of not being in their assigned locations, and they can cross locations that aren't in their burrow, but they'll maintain the restrictions in the general sense described above.

There are many, many ways in which this can be useful for controlling labor (you could even have your experienced miners mine veins of your choosing in this way -- it'd be a slightly clunky workaround, but it works). Just the basic burrow mechanic is powerful enough that it is pretty exploitable, so there will be several ways in which dwarves either move beyond their burrows or are affected adversely by heavy restrictions, but I'll leave those for you to find. These effects should all make sense and not be all that restrictive on play, especially if you are respectful to your critters (for instance, having your soap makers all stand in a 3x3 corner in the main hall until they starve to death shouldn't proceed as planned for very long).

A dwarf not specifically assigned to a burrow can work anywhere, but in the future there might be, say, a restricted burrow setting or something that'll exclude such dwarves. There are also items posted on dev about burrow hauling jobs and burrow production limits and all of whatever -- I haven't done any of that. Things like restricting manager orders to certain burrows etc. would all be great (and faster than doing it via particular workshops in general), but I don't want to get too far afield for this release (since I'm already far afield). In any case, the core work and mechanics are done.

Getting back to the immediate topic, alerts can now just restrict civilians to a set of burrows, with the further restriction that they should get to this set of burrows with priority. If a dwarf then doesn't feel comfortable working there because they were previous assigned to areas outside the alert area, they'll be idle as before, but it's a smaller problem than the one described in the beginning of the first paragraph, and it can be easily corrected if you plan on or are forced to stay in that alert state for a prolonged period. Giving individual dwarves different burrow assignments based on their alert state could be a future possibility (perhaps in conjunction with the work-gang class of ideas), but that's not in the cards for this release.

[Faces of Mu]

• How are you able to keep adding features and complexity in the face of ageing fan-base computers and technology?
  
• What advice can you give to budding programmers and developers about code and data efficiency?
• What have been some of your biggest mistakes as a programmer or designer that others could learn from?

[Faces of Mu]

Thanks, Footkerchief. Any idea if burrows are restricted to the traditional "inside" parameters (under natural ground), or if we can also make them aboveground or outside?

[Footkerchief]

Thanks, Footkerchief. Any idea if burrows are restricted to the traditional "inside" parameters (under natural ground), or if we can also make them aboveground or outside?

Looks like they can be wherever you want:

07/16/2009: [...] I got a chance to test alerts and burrows today. I set a couple of 3x3 burrows a good distance (~60 tiles) apart outside and made two alerts, each one restricting civilians to a different burrow. Then I mercilessly shifted the alert state back and forth. They ran between the two rectangles, responding immediately to each change. I didn't see any "entrance dance" style movement, and the fisherdwarf that was out fishing cancelled his job promptly and joined in on the fun. There are probably problems here and there, but it seems to be working fine. Generally, they'll search out meeting halls and other places to hang out in the alert burrows, but if they don't have any of those, they'll just stand anywhere in the burrow. They can work in the alert burrows, but I haven't yet handled merging regular burrow assignments with civilian alert burrow assignments (I'll do that before the release). There's a lot that can be done here, but this initial step will keep civilians safely tucked away while your soldiers deal with an immediate threat.

[Kiberkiller]

-snip-

[smjjames]

Will the liason and the king/queen be replaced by a successor in the new version if they die in Fort mode?

I'm just wondering about this as it would make sense. If the king/queen had any children, the eldest would ascend to the throne. If there aren't any heirs, I'm not sure how they do it but they definetly select a new monarch in the legends when there aren't any heirs.

To balance it out, maybe it would take a few years for a liason to be selected again (to discourage abuse of intentionally killing the liason).

[CobaltKobold]

Will the liason and the king/queen be replaced by a successor in the new version if they die in Fort mode?

I think so.

# Handle some other election/succession issues

[Footkerchief]

Will it be possible to mod creatures to attack with several bodyparts at ance? (all the claws or several tentacles at once)

Yeah, multi-body-part attacks are in.

01/16/2009: 837. Added nails (this will be most apparent once I get the raws back in for things like the big cats, as it'll need to get at the claw material to do damage properly), redefined natural attacks to allow multiple parts (mainly for claws and biting) though it's limited in some ways, went back and started in on the necessary updates for wrestling.

Followup:

It's a simultaneous attack with multiple parts (for things like clawing with all your claws or biting with all your teeth), but its implementation is quite gutter right now.  I'm not sure if I'll get a chance to improve it this time around.  I was really just going for getting claw/bite attacks to work properly.

[Kiberkiller]

Thank you, removed my question.

[Torham]

* edited typo

** lol, my question is like 3 posts up, and answered, so i removed mine (i was asking about replacement liason). Sorry for the mess.

[Aqizzar]

Considering all of the other changes to the way bodies behave, will aging work any differently in this release?  Such as the classic case of the 150 year old liaison who runs around like Superman up to the moment he croaks.  If this hasn't been changed yet, what are your plans for modeling aging effects?