The new dev page is indeed an awesome read. Here's my spontaneous and rather long review of it (rather of some parts of it), with the suggestions that come to mind.
-----------------------
Basic Adventure Mode Skills
- Hunting/tracking animals
- Everybody leaving trails of information that can be tracked with the appropriate skill
This would be a really novel feature in an adventure game, I'm looking forward to it.
- Raising livestock
- Eggs, chickens and associated objects
They're not exactly livestock, but I'd love to raise dragons or giant eagles from their eggs
. I suppose raiding the nest and facing the angry female would be a nice challenge. Or just buy the eggs from the elves or some smugglers.
Adventurer Role: Hero
- Combat flow
- Ability to jump up on and ride opponents if they are large enough (can happen to you too of course)
All the combat stuff is good, but this is excellent, especially the fact it can happen to you. I can imagine a small gnome jumping around on your shoulders and head and stabbing you all over with a tiny dagger while you flail your arms around helplessly.
Adventurer Role: Thief
- Bounties and being hunted
- No automatic recognition that you have stolen an item
- People should notice when items are missing and raise an alert
- Strangers found around town when crime is suspected should be stopped and searched
- Your identity/appearance should be remembered for a time if you are seen in an area
- If your identity/appearance is associated to an alert over a crime, somebody responsible in the entity should put a bounty on you if appropriate for the entity
- You should leave tracking information and it should keep track of the last many people you have talked to
- Entity warriors and other adventurers should following your tracking information
This is the thieving/crime system I've always dreamed of, I don't know of any game that even came close.
Pushing this just a step further, setting up evidence so that someone else gets accused in your place (dropping the bloody dagger in his garbage, money under his bed, or whatever), then fearing as the legendary investigator tracks one by one the clues that lead to you, would just be an amazing experience.- Concealing your identity
- Being able to assume a different name
- Changing your clothes should affect the appearance tracking
- Covering your face/hair with hoods, masks, etc. should affect appearance tracking
- Skills for changing voice and mannerisms convincingly
- If you screw up, you can be regarded as a suspicious stranger, which is worse than being a regular stranger
Having to observe and copy people's behavior so the disguise works would be interesting. For instance, if you infiltrate a temple but don't notice that people never walk on the engraved sacred floor in front of a particular statue, and walk there while being seen, you should immediately look suspicious.
Any plans in the close future for randomly granting rare special effects to some artifacts ? Since the eventual magic framework is not even in sight, it would be nice to have some effects that tie to the current game mechanics : attracting undead, spawning a demon, horrifying the elves for some reason or scaring some types of enemies, and so on.
They could also be associated with diseases/plagues or curses from the night creatures theme. Or with spheres and gods. Associating with gods would be something you could something you could probably code up in a half-day, if it's just an initial implementation for flavor : from time to time a dwarf makes an artifact « to the glory of XYZ ».
Adventurer Role: Explorer
- Lands and beastiary
- More overland map features and local variations
Will you keep improving the underground in the short term, and add incentives to dig down and face the dangers to find useful stuff? I'd love if you could bring back cave rivers, and get them to repopulate (and have creatures not get stuck or suicide in waterfalls), together with surface rivers. Some rivers could disappear underground and resurface elsewhere, as happens in real life.
A sea monster swimming up the river and attacking you from either underground or the surface would be a Fun surprise.
- Scrap good/evil lands for lands with more variety
And associate them with artifacts from time to time (i.e. The artifact is a mobile influence sphere) for amusing effects
.
Hauling Improvements
- Minecarts
- Wooden, stone-carved and metal tracks
- Can be filled like stockpiles and moved between destinations
Being able to make slopes of various grades would be interesting, both to build rails on them (so that in one direction, the cart doesn't need to be pulled), and to get objects or creatures to slide down them at various speeds depending on the grade and the amount of soap you put on it. A trap that sends goblins on a slippery spiral all the way down to the magma would definitely be fun, but the same mechanism would make for a nice garbage dump, etc.
Workshop Material Use and Specific Object Construction
- Ability to order the construction of a specific item or decoration of item in complete detail
On this topic, it would be nice if the current lists for object/material selection allowed for sorting by quality and remembered those settings, so we can easily build 20 beds without wasting the masterwork ones on peasants. Filtering by typing as on the job manager screen would also be welcome...
Improved Mechanics
Looking forward to this.
Job Priorities
- Rework dwarf AI to support job priorities
- Rework job assignment process to support priorities set on dwarves or for specific important jobs
The day this is implemented is gonna be a great day. This should also extend to designations, maybe with a similar interface as that for delimiting trafic zones : i.e. « this zone should be mined out asap !!! ».
Small related request that shouldn't require changing the whole pathfinding : can digging dwarves (and similar jobs) look 3 or 4 tiles away from them for the next batch of tiles to mine out, instead of immediately running a fortress-wide search ?
Military
- Improved sieges
- Coming up with a plan to overcome pathing obstacles to reach fortress innards
- Ability to dig (optionally, default on)
- Ability to build bridges/ramps
- Ability to use grappling hooks/ladders/climb
- Learning from mistakes if first attempted assault plan fails badly
- For instance, if many siegers are killed, caged, etc. in a given hallway, they shouldn't generally go that way again, even if that means building/climbing/digging
Very much looking forward to all this. If your fortress is famous, the invaders might be well informed by travelers' tales of the fortress' general layout.
Another way for a fortress to fall (very common in history) would be a traitor inside : either in disguise (nice tie-in with the thieving theme), or a beggar that you welcomed at the fortress, or a dwarf that cooperate with the enemy because of money, hate/misery/madness, ideology, or because they hold a loved one hostage. The traitor could do anything from giving info about the fortress layout and location of artifacts and secret documents, opening the door(s), pulling various levers, starting a fight for dubious pretexts to start a tantrum spiral, poisoning the water supply, digging at the wrong place, and so forth and so on.
Might I suggest allowing fortress mode dwarves to build small 1-tile boats that they can move by rowing or with poles, and that they use for fishing and crossing dangerous water. Villains could make them too, to cross or bridge moats and rivers, but in heavy current it would be dangerous.
Author
Topic: Future of the Fortress: The Development Page (Read 1612492 times)