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[Neonivek]

I only know a few plants we use, or used, for food that actually use acidic soil.

[NW_Kohaku]

I only know a few plants we use, or used, for food that actually use acidic soil.

A huge number of plants actually prefer slightly to moderately acidic soil, it's all a matter of calibration:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soil_acidity#Examples_of_plant_preferences

edit:

Here's another list, which includes some alkaline crops, as well:
http://www.plantea.com/pH.htm

[Eduren]

This sort of discussion is exactly what I missed about having a FotF thread.

[NW_Kohaku]

While underlying rock is important in generating soils, recent glaciology is critical and often mixes things up substantially. Only in tropical soils and very thin soils are you likely to always have a strong relationship between underlying rock and soil.

I don't actually recall hearing about glaciers and their effects on soil forming, or how soils are chosen in game.

I actually meant that the soils should have their own stats for mineral and pH levels in the raws, as well as stones, where stone layer stats are only read and used in cases where you are growing plants directly on muddied rock.

So, then, loamy soil would tend to have some fairly good soil quality initially, while sandy soil might be more difficult, but any decent soil would probably be better than the initial conditions of growing something straight on top of stone, where you might need to raise some plants specifically to break minerals out of the stone, and split the stone.

As for soils, being as they are in the raws (and hence, totally interchangeable with any soil that has similar tags), I would expect the only differences between most soils that the computer can read are in whether soils have the [SOIL], [SOIL_OCEAN], [SOIL_SAND], and [AQUIFER] tokens, so all soils with the same tokens would be indistinguishable, and hence, just totally chosen at random when generating biomes.  (So Peat, Silt, Loamy Sand, Sand Loam, and Sandy Clay Loam are all functionally identical in the computer's eyes, as are all forms of sand.)

[Neonivek]

I sorta meant very acidic soil...

[snooptodd]

What I am talking about in that thread I referenced is, at its most extreme, starting to remove the whole need to assign labors to dwarves, because they start deciding what jobs they want to take up on their own, based on financial incintives from the player and the personality and likes of the dwarf.

What I'm talking about is taking some of the control out of the hands of the player, as opposed to simply automating a process that a player would normally simply have to micromanage.  Reducing micronmanagement is a relatively simple argument to make, but I think people would have very conflicted views on whether or not to start giving the player less God-like control over the thoughts of his/her dwarves.

I want.
no more managing dwarfs labors.
Even a simple implimentation where the highest skilled free dwarf would be picked for a job would be good enough for me.

[Hammurabi]

Reddit has a Q&A from Toady posted.  I didn't see this posted any where else here.

[G-Flex]

Under what circumstances would you ever consider releasing the game under creative commons or some other open source license? Would you do it if you were terminally ill and had 3 months to live?

Wow. An overasked question and stated completely tactlessly. Toady's response was great, though.

[NW_Kohaku]

Referring to the Q&A that Hammurabi posted a link to, it's actually pretty different that Toady says he's rather fond of the idea of putting in sewers and fertilizer because of dwarf waste, but that he just doesn't like the idea of dwarves having to take one more break out of a year to do some kind of personal maitainance.

That implies that if waste collection could be made less obtrusive, or that if dwarves were simply required to do less of other things (like, say, eating only 6 times a year, drinking only 12 times a year, and going to eliminate waste only 6 times a year, so that it would balance out), we could have our fertilizers and sewers.  (And simply make Adventurers be supermen who simply do not go, or possibly just wear diapers that only get changed during fast travel.)

In fact...

Is making dwarves spend more of their time on their assigned jobs the only thing keeping you from dwarves that can do more creative and varied things with their lives, as well as making sure that "Nobody Poops"?  If we work out ways to make dwarves take less breaks in other areas like eating and drinking (and commensurately making food and drink more difficult to get in the Improved Farming section), then can we make "humanure dwarfmanure umm... Dwarfertilizer(?)" a part of the maintainance of proper farms?  Will something like extending the length of a year, or generally adapting the lifestyle of a dwarf to spending less time at work be something you consider in pursuit of more advanced simulation of other aspects of dwarven life than just industrial productivity?

[Eduren]

Yeah, some of the things that people said in the reddit post were a little harsh, but overall it worked out pretty nicely.

[MaDeR Levap]

Small comment about programming. Seems from recent adventures with .10, .11 and .12 that best method would be for each release:
- implementing a little of new things,
- fixing old or new bugs.
In that way, new features would seep in, be tested by players ASAP and any bugs with them fixed in next release along with some older bugs (from beginnings of .31 and 40d).
Of course, purely bugfixing releases would be welcome and needed, too.

[Untelligent]

Well, he said he'd get working on new stuff after the month-end break.

[monk12]

Hey Toady, What's your favorite DF drink? Are you a Dwarven Rum man, or a Strawberry Wine guy? Or some MYSTERY THIRD OPTION!?!

[Neonivek]

Hey Toady, What's your favorite DF drink? Are you a Dwarven Rum man, or a Strawberry Wine guy? Or some MYSTERY THIRD OPTION!?!

Purring Maggot Milk?

[NW_Kohaku]

Purring Maggot Milk?

That won't happen until Dwarven Blaand gets implimented.