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[greywolf]

Since it's really hard to preserve shells (as shells and bones disappear at the beginning of every new season), perhaps it would be best not to have dwarves demand shells at all. I know I've had a few dwarves go mad because they couldn't get a shell, and mostly because they just happened to get a fey mood right after spring arrived. I don't think bones are an issue, since they're plentiful (and especially since you can just butcher a cat or something). I think either removing shells in artifacts demands completely would work, or allow each shell (and bone) to have its own time limit for expiration, although the latter would probably be a lot more tedious to program.

[Rondol]

Personally, there are times I wished that DF had a materials system more akin to that in IVAN. Unfortunately coding something like that in would not only be a blatant ripoff, but also likely be quite difficult I imagine.

[AlStar]

Shells and bones only disappear when they're outside. If you make an indoor storage room that takes bones and shell, it'll last forever.

[bbb]

if only they go into bins....

[Rondol]

Hey... why don't they? Bones and shells are small enough to bin, or should be anyways. I mean come on -- unless we're talking some monstrous turtles or microscopic crowns, turtle shells can't be any larger than a dwarven crown...

[Maximus]

Or barrels.  How 'bout it, Toady, can we have refuse barrels?

[Chthon]

quote:Originally posted by AlStar:
<STRONG>Shells and bones only disappear when they're outside. If you make an indoor storage room that takes bones and shell, it'll last forever.</STRONG>

I wish this were true.  However in the current build, I watched a number of shells and bones disappear in an indoor refuse pile.  It takes about half to 3/4 a season though.

[AlStar]

Really? I guess I must use them up faster than they decay inside.

It's still a big step up from leaving them outside though.

[Chthon]

I only know this because at the beginning I lost about 20-30 bone/shells to rot even though they were indoors.  I was heart broken, but still had enough crafts to buy out the dwarves.  (This time I had about 70 immigrants in the second year!  Yikes!  Put a chunk out to hunt to thin the pop, but instead got some competent marksdwarves, LOL)

[qalnor]

quote:Originally posted by Rondol:
<STRONG>Personally, there are times I wished that DF had a materials system more akin to that in IVAN. Unfortunately coding something like that in would not only be a blatant ripoff, but also likely be quite difficult I imagine.</STRONG>

Hm, to be honest I'm not sure this game needs a system like that. At least not for Fort mode, for Adventurer mode it might be useful to add depth, but since Adventuer mode and Fort mode work on the same core mechanics, I would worry that it would add too much complexity to fort mode that I'm not sure you could really control in any meaningful fashion. Complexity without control is just randomness, unfortunately.

I would say, however, that I don't think that coding an open ended materials system is really inherently a ripoff of Ivan.

Now if dwarves got smarter from eating ommel cerumen, that would be a ripoff, but every RPG has some sort of material system, and I've actually seen one or two with as much or almost as much depth.

[Rondol]

quote:Originally posted by qalnor:
<STRONG>I would say, however, that I don't think that coding an open ended materials system is really inherently a ripoff of Ivan. </STRONG>

You're right. On all counts, actually. However, it would be nice to see more variety in material qualities, other than the current "anything less than copper is 50%". I mean come on -- in like 99% of anything that contains dragons, dragon bone is a great material for all sorts of things. Often it's as strong as, or stronger than, steel.

[qalnor]

Agreed. For this particular thing I think all that's actually technically needed is a new tag in Creature_x.txt which would override the default 50% value.

[Toady One]

You could always look at the Armok I editors if you want to see a complicated material system.  It didn't use all of the properties listed, but it used most of them.  I suspect some of it will creep in over time, as they are needed.  In any case, I wouldn't be ripping anything off, especially considering that I've never played IVAN.  I'd consider going back to the multiple tissues for body parts and melting points and all that, but only step by step, as it comes up.  Some of it might come up when I get to fire, and more when I get to the Combat Arc.

Armok

[lumin]

quote:I've never played IVAN

Wow, I thought for sure you had come up with the same body-part idea from IVAN.  IVAN uses a very similar combat system that DF uses, only much more graphically.  I do think that DF's combat is a little deeper though, since more than just appendages can be damaged (stomach, brain, lungs, etc) and that can have an effect on your health (vomiting, breathing, etc).

That is very respectable since you came up with this idea on your own.

[Toady One]

We started adding body parts (and skill improvement) to our games partially as an outgrowth of our pen-and-paper Cyberpunk 2013/2020 games in the late 80s.  It also game out of our text descriptions of damage that didn't match up with the hitpoint counters going down, so we added more and more criticals and so on.  Of course, we didn't release any of our text games from the 80s and early 90s.  You can be very very thankful for this.  Example (from BASIC Dragslay):

"The skeleton hits you in the head with its short sword!  You lose 9 IQ points!  NO DUH!!!!  RETARDED!!!!!!"

Also, on the thread:  it's strange that bones and shells are disappearing from inside.  I don't remember the state of that off the top of my head.  You can have refuse bins if they get all nasty with crud, and the dwarves sometimes catch the flesh-eating bacteria from touching them.