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[Urist Imiknorris]

Lichs?

[tfaal]

Just use you're imagination. Night Creatures are the monsters in the forest, the things that go bump in the night. They represent our primal fear of the dark, the inability of humanity to ever truly overcome the world beyond our sight. Their true form is immaterial; the important aspects are the mystery of them, the whispers spoken by frightened villagers, and the ever-present danger of being taken in the night by things beyond comprehension. If you really need to name and shape them, then every writer from the brothers Grimm to Lovecraft has got your back. I'm hoping they'll be randomly generated, though.

EDIT: Wow, that came of way more pretentiously than I thought it would.

[Urist Imiknorris]

Please let there be the possibility of a fluffy wambler as a night creature.

EDIT:

FEEP *disembowels adventurer*

[Rube]

I immediately thought of Vampires when he said night creatures, because they're the only creature I could think of that would work predominantly at night, keep slaves, and generally be individually powerful enough to warrant special attention. Also, they aren't in the game yet.

Vampires are interesting for Dwarf Fortress because they're so random in myth. Some can turn into various animals, some melt in daylight, some drink blood whereas others steal souls, random weaknesses to stuff like vegetables and water, etc. They're perfect fodder for random generation scripts.

[Willfor]

I immediately thought of Vampires when he said night creatures, because they're the only creature I could think of that would work predominantly at night, keep slaves, and generally be individually powerful enough to warrant special attention. Also, they aren't in the game yet.

Vampires are interesting for Dwarf Fortress because they're so random in myth. Some can turn into various animals, some melt in daylight, some drink blood whereas others steal souls, random weaknesses to stuff like vegetables and water, etc. They're perfect fodder for random generation scripts.

Some also sparkle and attract millions of fangirls. I think this possibility should be included as well.

[Haspen]

I immediately thought of Vampires when he said night creatures, because they're the only creature I could think of that would work predominantly at night, keep slaves, and generally be individually powerful enough to warrant special attention. Also, they aren't in the game yet.

Vampires are interesting for Dwarf Fortress because they're so random in myth. Some can turn into various animals, some melt in daylight, some drink blood whereas others steal souls, random weaknesses to stuff like vegetables and water, etc. They're perfect fodder for random generation scripts.

Some also sparkle and attract millions of fangirls. I think this possibility should be included as well.

*thinks about...*

ARGH. Damn you!

[tfaal]

Vampires would be cool, but to be honest, the first thing that popped into my mind was werewolves, which are implemented very blandly right now. I would expect them to get swept under the night creature umbrella, since they fit many of those features. However, perhaps the most satisfying solution would be a restricted random generator, like the one proposed for dragons, that would be capable of generating vampire or werewolf-like things.

[Knight Otu]

True, but the big problem with werewolves currently is that there is no transformation yet for the common image of werewolves. That said, with the curses and corruption framework, it is almost certainly all of the above, even if they're not necessarily night-bound (even before Twilight, vampires didn't necessarily die in sunlight) - vampires, zombies of the infectious kind, werewolves; possibly also DF originals like nightwings and foul blendecs (possibly anything currently found in evil lands?)... I'm not sure if we should expect a random night creature generator yet, though.

[kilakan]

anyone else notice the last item on the list was boats and moving FORTRESSES!!!  Bloody want my fortress to be able to stand up and walk away now...

[G-Flex]

Much of the appeal of "night creatures", especially in real-world local folk culture, is that they're mysterious. I think procedurally-generated/random types of them would be a great idea here, so that you're never sure what to expect, especially since villagers' tales might be incomplete or inaccurate.

[Psieye]

The first priority will probably just be dealing with walled-off hallways and stuff like that though -- things that are really easy to do that kill off entire sieges.  I guess it's entirely possible that they wouldn't be able to find you if you hid behind 10 meter thick walls hidden off in random places, but then it should be possible for them to live in your upper levels for years while you work away tradeless on mushrooms down below (although there are major obstacles to that that make it non-practical for the dev page).  They'd probably just leave after looting all your exposed items and slaughtering anybody left outside (including any entity pop infrastructure you've got out there).  Although once they can get through a single wall, they can just dig ambitious tunnels for you at random I suppose.  As long as walling yourself in has reasonable results, I'll be happy with however they handle it.  Right now it's too much of an exploit (of course, the whole "digging invaders" is enough of a touchy subject that it's explictly stated as optional on the dev page, and how you handle exploits is up to you at that point).

I would propose 2 systems to distinguish normal invaders from game ending HFS. It's realistic that if you hole up behind really really thick walls and never trade, then normal invaders don't have a way to realise there's dwarves hiding so they should leave you alone. At the same time, HFS shouldn't be stopped by walling it off no matter how thick the walls are.

Actually the HFS can have an alternative to digging to get around the current "wall off" exploit: what if they could pass through walls and floors? That is, they swim through rock just like they swim through magma? Then HFS would truly be the game enders and the existing infinite spawning of them would ensure forts die no matter what.



Regarding Night Creatures, assuming we're sticking with humanoids (as otherwise mythologies from around the world will have so many possible examples we'd be flooded - e.g. the one-eyed hopping umbrella) there's plenty room for a restricted random generator to work with: do they eat corpses, merely suck blood, steal souls, mutilate the deceased, infect others? How far have they rotted away and is it homogeneous or not (e.g. skeletal arms with zombie torso)? What do the locals call them? How aggressive and territorial are they? Do they have symbiotes? Side effects of being around them or getting some action done by them? DF is destined to be a fantasy world generator and Forgotten Beasts are the first sign of the RNG being used to invent new fantasy creatures. Somebody in our human history came up with the fantasy of vampires, zombies and such. DF will generate new fantasies in each world and we'll remember them if we interact with them in a memorable adventure (or fortress).

anyone else notice the last item on the list was boats and moving FORTRESSES!!!  Bloody want my fortress to be able to stand up and walk away now...

I just know someone somewhere will design a fortress that can transform into a giant robot once some of these dev list items are implemented...

[Diablous]

Just read the new dev page. Oh god, yes! I really like Capturing people alive and interrogations. That part really interested me.

[Footkerchief]

Dang, that's a lot of green.  I haven't had time yet to read the new dev notes or even Toady's reply above.

Maybe this is a stupid question, but how do you see the stickied bugs in the bug tracker?

When I click View Issues, the top two or more browser scroll pages are set apart by a line.  There are many stickied issues.

Yeah, from View Issues, click the filter option for "Show Sticky Issues," then insure that the checkbox is checked, and click "Apply Filter".  The stickied issues are the ones that show up above the gray divider.

And yeah, there are a lot of them, mostly because the bug severity is kind of a pyramid -- we started off at the tip of the pyramid, with a small number of the absolute worst bugs, and now we're moving into the second or third tier, where there's a larger number of less severe bugs.

[Little]

Just read the new dev page. Oh god, yes! I really like Capturing people alive and interrogations. That part really interested me.

That, plus the new tissue system that was implemented! >: D

[Diablous]

Just read the new dev page. Oh god, yes! I really like Capturing people alive and interrogations. That part really interested me.

That, plus the new tissue system that was implemented! >: D

You're right. I'm going to love it when that is implemented.