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[nil]

Honestly, I hope Toady doesn't bother with light any time soon.  I just don't see it bringing much to the table, at least not compared to the effort involved for both programmer and player.  Either it doesn't have substantial effects (i.e., creatures can basically see in the dark) in which case you're not doing much more than adding flavor text to the {k} screen, or it does and a person won't be able to mine more than ten squares from the surface without a damn bee industry.  Or maybe you make the dwarves see in the dark (like if cave-adapted) but take it away from surface creatures, which basically would amount to creating an entire new tile dimension solely to create another gimmicky way to kill elves.  Now I'm not opposed to gimmicky ways to kill elves--far from it--but you gotta have the proper priorities.  I hope Bay12 at least finishes the army arc and a dozen or so Eternal Suggestions before they start bothering with lighting..

[dennislp3]

Honestly, I hope Toady doesn't bother with light any time soon.  I just don't see it bringing much to the table, at least not compared to the effort involved for both programmer and player.  Either it doesn't have substantial effects (i.e., creatures can basically see in the dark) in which case you're not doing much more than adding flavor text to the {k} screen, or it does and a person won't be able to mine more than ten squares from the surface without a damn bee industry.  Or maybe you make the dwarves see in the dark (like if cave-adapted) but take it away from surface creatures, which basically would amount to creating an entire new tile dimension solely to create another gimmicky way to kill elves.  Now I'm not opposed to gimmicky ways to kill elves--far from it--but you gotta have the proper priorities.  I hope Bay12 at least finishes the army arc and a dozen or so Eternal Suggestions before they start bothering with lighting..

I personally wouldn't mind if the current "dig deep til you find the magma sea" or "dig til you see what you want" methods of play were slowed down somehow...wouldnt hurt anything except making you not as invulnerable in many cases

[Flaede]

Honestly, I hope Toady doesn't bother with light any time soon.  I just don't see it bringing much to the table, at least not compared to the effort involved for both programmer and player.  Either it doesn't have substantial effects (i.e., creatures can basically see in the dark) in which case you're not doing much more than adding flavor text to the {k} screen, or it does and a person won't be able to mine more than ten squares from the surface without a damn bee industry.  Or maybe you make the dwarves see in the dark (like if cave-adapted) but take it away from surface creatures, which basically would amount to creating an entire new tile dimension solely to create another gimmicky way to kill elves.  Now I'm not opposed to gimmicky ways to kill elves--far from it--but you gotta have the proper priorities.  I hope Bay12 at least finishes the army arc and a dozen or so Eternal Suggestions before they start bothering with lighting..

I personally wouldn't mind if the current "dig deep til you find the magma sea" or "dig til you see what you want" methods of play were slowed down somehow...wouldnt hurt anything except making you not as invulnerable in many cases

You could make inferior tallow candles instead. Or fat or oil burning lamps.

[Mel_Vixen]

or just light a dry stick on fire. I know that firs actualy burn very well - to good actually that stuff got me almost blown up but thats another story.

[Kogut]

Making light CPU efficient is (IMHO) way too time consuming to do it now, before bugfixing, caravan arc, military arcs, eternal suggestions...

[abadidea]

Don't dwarves have IR vision anyway? That should alleviate the need for a while 

[MrWiggles]

Honestly, I hope Toady doesn't bother with light any time soon.  I just don't see it bringing much to the table, at least not compared to the effort involved for both programmer and player.  Either it doesn't have substantial effects (i.e., creatures can basically see in the dark) in which case you're not doing much more than adding flavor text to the {k} screen, or it does and a person won't be able to mine more than ten squares from the surface without a damn bee industry.  Or maybe you make the dwarves see in the dark (like if cave-adapted) but take it away from surface creatures, which basically would amount to creating an entire new tile dimension solely to create another gimmicky way to kill elves.  Now I'm not opposed to gimmicky ways to kill elves--far from it--but you gotta have the proper priorities.  I hope Bay12 at least finishes the army arc and a dozen or so Eternal Suggestions before they start bothering with lighting..

As discussed in the linked thread about lighting, it could affect various things.

Such as workshop qualities, combat, sneaking detections, noble demands, room values, and plant growth.

[LoSboccacc]

Honestly, I hope Toady doesn't bother with light any time soon.  I just don't see it bringing much to the table, at least not compared to the effort involved for both programmer and player.  Either it doesn't have substantial effects (i.e., creatures can basically see in the dark) in which case you're not doing much more than adding flavor text to the {k} screen, or it does and a person won't be able to mine more than ten squares from the surface without a damn bee industry.  Or maybe you make the dwarves see in the dark (like if cave-adapted) but take it away from surface creatures, which basically would amount to creating an entire new tile dimension solely to create another gimmicky way to kill elves.  Now I'm not opposed to gimmicky ways to kill elves--far from it--but you gotta have the proper priorities.  I hope Bay12 at least finishes the army arc and a dozen or so Eternal Suggestions before they start bothering with lighting..

As discussed in the linked thread about lighting, it could affect various things.

Such as workshop qualities, combat, sneaking detections, noble demands, room values, and plant growth.

and another gimmicky way to kill elves

seriously, why disdain that?

[ShadeJS]

1.6ghz 3-core to 3.0ghz 2-core. I am still keeping the old computer actually since it's still only a year old and pretty great. It's just that my dad got a promotion and all 

But before that I had the same 2.8ghz mono pentium 4 for five whole years. It ran DF mighty fast.

Moving from a one core 3ghz machine to a two core 3ghz (with 2.5 x the bus speed, and faster RAM) was great for me. DF gets one core, the rest of the system, a web browser, and whatever libraries DF is taking to gets the other. People always talk about core speed and DF, but the impact of a fast low latency bus with fast low latency RAM really shouldn't be overlooked.

My single biggest issue is that I half live at my girlfriends place, and all I have there is a 1.6ghz P4 with 512MB of RAM on a Lenovo laptop. That's what Dungeon Crawl is for.

[LoSboccacc]

1.6ghz 3-core to 3.0ghz 2-core. I am still keeping the old computer actually since it's still only a year old and pretty great. It's just that my dad got a promotion and all 

But before that I had the same 2.8ghz mono pentium 4 for five whole years. It ran DF mighty fast.

Moving from a one core 3ghz machine to a two core 3ghz (with 2.5 x the bus speed, and faster RAM) was great for me. DF gets one core, the rest of the system, a web browser, and whatever libraries DF is taking to gets the other. People always talk about core speed and DF, but the impact of a fast low latency bus with fast low latency RAM really shouldn't be overlooked.

My single biggest issue is that I half live at my girlfriends place, and all I have there is a 1.6ghz P4 with 512MB of RAM on a Lenovo laptop. That's what Dungeon Crawl is for.

I've a long lasting fortress running at 5 fps and the other core is for a brand new fortress! yay!

[Caldfir]

I personally wouldn't mind if the current "dig deep til you find the magma sea" or "dig til you see what you want" methods of play were slowed down somehow...wouldn't hurt anything except making you not as invulnerable in many cases

I agree about this.  There has been a loss of pacing in dwarf mode since the .31 release.  I don't know if lighting is the best solution to this, but in my mind there should be something stopping the player from just drilling down to hit magma at embark.  I'm not saying it is a difficulty issue or anything, just pacing - in 40d there was usually a long period of searching for magma that held back the metal industry until completed, and it was pretty fun. 

[Sizik]

I personally wouldn't mind if the current "dig deep til you find the magma sea" or "dig til you see what you want" methods of play were slowed down somehow...wouldn't hurt anything except making you not as invulnerable in many cases

I agree about this.  There has been a loss of pacing in dwarf mode since the .31 release.  I don't know if lighting is the best solution to this, but in my mind there should be something stopping the player from just drilling down to hit magma at embark.  I'm not saying it is a difficulty issue or anything, just pacing - in 40d there was usually a long period of searching for magma that held back the metal industry until completed, and it was pretty fun.

But that long period of searching was often done in the site finder, rather than in-game.

[hermes]

I personally wouldn't mind if the current "dig deep til you find the magma sea" or "dig til you see what you want" methods of play were slowed down somehow...wouldn't hurt anything except making you not as invulnerable in many cases

I agree about this.  There has been a loss of pacing in dwarf mode since the .31 release.  I don't know if lighting is the best solution to this, but in my mind there should be something stopping the player from just drilling down to hit magma at embark.  I'm not saying it is a difficulty issue or anything, just pacing - in 40d there was usually a long period of searching for magma that held back the metal industry until completed, and it was pretty fun.

Good point about the pacing, I think the caves provide a nice diversion on the way down, but yes, something would be good to slow down the rate of development as things stand.  For some reason, the low tech beginnings of each fortress is the high point of gameplay for me.

The lighting thread is horrendously overlooked IMO, and as a potential fortress mode feature I think it stands to change the game for the better in a dramatic way.  However I do agree with nil on the technical issues, not least because I think they are twofold; the intersection of lighting and pathfinding is a veritable nightmare of DF underbelly-programming and I wouldn't blame Toady for putting that off for some time.

Bees and the new animals really shall be awesome.  I really can't wait for the caravan arc to make an appearance... things are on the verge of getting really epic in DF.

[Greiger]

Things have been messy lately -- last few days, including today, are going to be marred running around trying to fix up Zach's broken computer, and I'm sitting on a hundred emails.  I should have a beekeeping devlog up within the hour though.  A vacation would be nice, and I'll announce it if I finally get a chance for one, he he he.

Probably way too late and old news but I wonder how many computer techs live in Washington that would happily fix the Adams' computers at cost, if not just completely for free.


Although it would probably be very hard to resist searching through the computer for a dev version, or hooking the drive up to a tech station with a data recovery program to look for deleted dev versions... 

Huh... I probably single-handedly convinced Toady to never take his computer to a tech shop.

[Mel_Vixen]

yeah not to mention that they could find my keylogger on that pc ... umm i shouldnt have said that right?