Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Baughn]

As I understand it, entity populations are basically just.. non-named entities.

Like, "In this city live Urist McDwarf, Poison McElf, Trader McHuman, and fifteen dwarves." The three named characters have legends, and are tracked from birth to death; the other fifteen are more sparingly simulated, possibly even to the point of generating a history the moment you ask for one.

Of course, your own actions could quite possibly promote them to tracked status. Like, if you bring one to kill a dragon.. and he doesn't get eaten.

It's a cheap way to generate a larger-seeming world. I don't know if that's exactly how Toady is doing it, though.

[Syff]

I'd presume that somewhere in there is also some notion of which entities know what, since that seems to be required for a lot of things on the list.

[Quatch]

Once there is a notion of relative wealth, will that include dwarf-mode economics, so we don't have to build buckets for our dwarves to sleep in?

A related question, Will dwarves, other than nobles*, get mood-thoughts from encountering dwarves at different relative wealth. Such as a poor dwarf seeing a rich dwarf. Would that depress or inspire? Instill envy? Can dwarves sense the magnitude of wealth difference?

*And their bedroom envy.

[Osmosis Jones]

Woo! Cheers for the response Toady!

[Footkerchief]

Sorry if it's not the right place to ask, but would someone explain me what means entity populations?

As I understand it, entity populations are basically just.. non-named entities.

Like, "In this city live Urist McDwarf, Poison McElf, Trader McHuman, and fifteen dwarves." The three named characters have legends, and are tracked from birth to death; the other fifteen are more sparingly simulated, possibly even to the point of generating a history the moment you ask for one.

Of course, your own actions could quite possibly promote them to tracked status. Like, if you bring one to kill a dragon.. and he doesn't get eaten.

It's a cheap way to generate a larger-seeming world. I don't know if that's exactly how Toady is doing it, though.

Baughn's explanation is pretty much correct, with the caveat that, in Toady-speak, "entity" refers to any recognized group of intelligent creatures, ranging in size from an adventurer's party to an entire civilization.  The entities themselves generally have names (one current exception is the primitive cave-dwellers).  The entity members, though, may be nameless or otherwise not fully realized, as Baughn explained.  The upshot is that big, abstract populations let you do big worlds, big battles, etc. without generating huge amounts of data (that are 99% useless anyway).

I posted some more quotes on the subject a few pages back.

[Cespinarve]

Given how much confusion and problems people have had, would you be willing to produce the exact, precise steps to get a Baron, and to get the economy to turn on? There's so many different and contradictory statements.

Well, given as there are plenty of mature forts with lots of economic output, I'm going to pop this in the bug tracker if it is not there already.

EDIT Already exists: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=519

[Mason11987]

Hi Toady,

The mental atts, as of the fixes for 0.31.11 (some of these are weird in part because only 3 mental atts can influence a roll, so there are holes, and there are probably dumb choices):  A lot of these will only effect duration, when that is the only available skill effect to begin with, but they are factored into outcomes when it applies.

analytical ability skills: animal care, trapping, cheesemaker, cook, smelter, extract strand, cut gem, siege craft, siege operate, mechanics, architecture, diagnose, appraisal, organization, record keeping, knowledge acquisition, knapping

*snip*

Is this the only impact these attributes currently have?  Some had guessed that there were other impacts:

Memory: skill gain/rust rates
Focus: how long a dwarf stays at a task
Willpower: possible this relates to tantrums, happiness, insanity, or possibly other effects

Are these: currently in place and working, currently in place and not working, planned, or not planned.


With relation to 40d, you had said that various jobs were required to get a Baron: " 4 of the following: 25 crafting jobs, 25 metal-related jobs, 25 wood-related jobs, 10 gem jobs, 25 stone jobs, 25 food jobs. "  Also, some have mentioned constructed roads as being required to get a baron.  Are these requirements now obsolete?


Thanks!

[Maxxeh]

Kind of seperate from adventure mode goals and the like, but will viruses be able to transfer through blood and vomit interaction anytime?

If a dwarf has a vomiting disease, I can see it spreading through a fortress pretty quick unless hospitalised (maybe buckets could be useful here!! hehe)
or a dwarf with a blood disease could be fighting, get a limb chopped off, and any goblins that come into contact with the blood would also be infected.

(as well as these realistic uses. I want zombies with infectious bites! I'm finding them hard to mod right now!)

[Footkerchief]

Kind of seperate from adventure mode goals and the like, but will viruses be able to transfer through blood and vomit interaction anytime?

If a dwarf has a vomiting disease, I can see it spreading through a fortress pretty quick unless hospitalised (maybe buckets could be useful here!! hehe)
or a dwarf with a blood disease could be fighting, get a limb chopped off, and any goblins that come into contact with the blood would also be infected.

(as well as these realistic uses. I want zombies with infectious bites! I'm finding them hard to mod right now!)

Contagious/communicable diseases were planned for the big April release, but were postponed.  That would include all kinds of disease vectors.  Toady also talked about infectious diseases in DF Talk #2.

[Mephansteras]

Will you be adding in some code to handle worn materials protecting the wearer from various dangerous elements? Things like dragon scale armor protecting from firebreath or an artifact mask that protects against poisonous vapor would be fun.

If it's not magic, there are some still missing properties that should help, like thermal conductivity.  Right now, a dragon item would become hot and not be damaged, but it would still convey heat to you.  Even if it has a high specific heat, it would still store the energy and transfer some of it to you (though slower).   So it really needs to reject the heat in the first place, which requires the conductivity.  Or there's magic.  Which I imagine would cover this kind of thing in most systems, at least in special cases.

In a somewhat related vein, what are your plans on having equipment created from multiple materials? Spears, for example, are almost never made out of solid metal in real life. And most swords have wood and leather handles, or at least leather wrapped around the metal hilt.

[Maxxeh]

Thanks very much for your response footkercheif

[zwei]

Can we have a goblin fry-basket made of magma safe wall and floor grates that we can place and/or trap creatures in, that we can then lower into a convenient pool of magma?

The only special provision the game would need to understand is that when the fortress part moves down, fluid should be pushed up through fluid-passable floors instead of treating it like an unpassable floor/wall.  It'll be something I have to remember to do as a one-liner, but that's really all it comes down to, and I've written it down now to remind me.  So yeah.

I have this vision of DF implemented Tokyo-3 style fortress where buildings raise to surface or sink deep underground to huge carven where they hang from ceiling. (While Shinji McDwarf battles Bronze Collosus in his HFS made armor).

[Vicomt]

Toady, having just noticed your thoughts on save-compatibility and the breaking thereof....

Have you thought of embedding a save file version number in the save file itself? it's (relatively) trivial to then maintain/upgrade older versions with (again relatively) simple logic.

just a thought. I's vewwy sowwy if it's been mentioned before.

[Mel_Vixen]

Toady you spoke of "Boulders" Buried in the soil. Does that include Multi-tile boulders like "Glacial boulders"?

I didn't think about multi-tile boulders.  It could be like two rock wall tiles sitting in the soil (or on top of the soil, looking at these pictures) instead of anything treated as a special object.  At that point, it's probably more for whenever we get canyons and mesas and interesting above ground stuff, rather than for this "adventurers and soil-bound dwarves get more access to large stones" change.

I fine with that. I am just used to this stuff because we have plenty of it around so i would like to see actual inland-glaciers and what they leave in the game. 2 tiles might by the way a bit small. Some of these "boulders" are bigger then a house. Some of them were used for cultic rituals by the way . Since i am already at WG stuff: Any plans for flows in the ocean that cool or heat up the land (and have impact on the weather sim)?

Will the new crushing traps with moving sections have the same 'atomsmashing' effect as raised bridges do now? Or will you get to uh... loot pancakes of whatever you killed?

In addition to Psieye's question: Wouldt it be possible to remove atom-smashing for bridges and replace it by actual crushing? 

The problem there is adding some kind of flag to have an item in a square, above the ground but below the buildings.  It would need to be respected everywhere.  It's not impossible, because there are already the buried and imbedded flags that are respected everywhere, and it would be nearly identical (except for the few places where it is actually added/removed).  There's a further complication with the material spatter, but it's already a problem, which is whether the spatter is on the bridge or beneath the bridge, since I imagine some squashed items would just become spatter, instead of a crushed item.

I would guess everything that is squishy would be a spatter on the floor under the bridge and on the bridge. This would include anything made from meat and similiar.

Will you be adding in some code to handle worn materials protecting the wearer from various dangerous elements? Things like dragon scale armor protecting from firebreath or an artifact mask that protects against poisonous vapor would be fun.

If it's not magic, there are some still missing properties that should help, like thermal conductivity.  Right now, a dragon item would become hot and not be damaged, but it would still convey heat to you.  Even if it has a high specific heat, it would still store the energy and transfer some of it to you (though slower).   So it really needs to reject the heat in the first place, which requires the conductivity.  Or there's magic.  Which I imagine would cover this kind of thing in most systems, at least in special cases.

I like thermal conductivity - it could be pretty usefull too like cooling or heating rooms, traps, boilers etc. A "Thermal computing" device would be a challenge thought hehehe. Back to serious now: Thermal conductivity would be rather nice too for stuff like fires in rooms etc. and with a bit modding of aquifers/fluids and porousness for stones you could create stuff like Thermal springs and Geysers. Rivers and lakes transport and store also thermal energy and create by this micro-biomes. What might be needed is thought some kind of "volume" for tiles. 

will moving fortress parts displace water, thus enabling an actual oversized piston pump to be created?

It's doable using a slight modification of the current fluid code, but there are going to be a ton of edge and not-so-edge cases where it doesn't really work right, so we'll have to see how it turns out.

I would be for it thought a rewrite for the fluids to make them faster would be neat and needed before you engage such a features.

[Footkerchief]

In a somewhat related vein, what are your plans on having equipment created from multiple materials? Spears, for example, are almost never made out of solid metal in real life. And most swords have wood and leather handles, or at least leather wrapped around the metal hilt.

Toady's thoughts as of ~6 months ago:

Question about adamantine weapons.

If you wanted to make an adamantine hammer,  you could make a hollow adamantine shell and fill it with molten lead.  This would be a very effective weapon!  Will we be able to do anything like this in the foreseeable future?

I could have sworn this exact idea came up before, but I couldn't find much.  Anyway, it basically depends on whether/when Toady implements a system for multi-component or multi-material items.  The quote below is about armor made of both leather and metal, but the challenges are mostly the same, so it's relevant:

There's some trickiness with items that are actually made from multiple materials.  Things like studding aren't as much of a problem, since the "improvements" on leather items can handle this.  But a lot of the in-game items should actually have several materials just for their basic structure, and it becomes harder to account for them.  Armok I played with making items up from components, but that was sort of a mess.  On the other hand, I'd want to avoid going through all the hassles of fully respecting a half-leather/half-metal item (with respect to things like weight and temperature effects) if I'm just going to flesh it out more later.  So, I dunno.  I have to think more about what items will be like if I change it.  Something like how it keeps track of threads and dyes might work for quite a long time (I think you can change the material of a bucket handle right now for instance), but certain items really don't have one main material, which is the problem.

Yeah, I remember it coming up before as well, at least as somebody's offhand remark, and yeah, we need some more backing in the code but it's definitely something that dwarves would want to do, assuming they don't have some weird ethics regarding mixing adamantine with stuff.  I think at some point there was a rule against improving adamantine items or improving with adamantine, but that might be long gone.

Toady, having just noticed your thoughts on save-compatibility and the breaking thereof....

Have you thought of embedding a save file version number in the save file itself? it's (relatively) trivial to then maintain/upgrade older versions with (again relatively) simple logic.

just a thought. I's vewwy sowwy if it's been mentioned before.

I think the game already does this.  Toady has mentioned several times that some bug fixes also include code to "patch" bugged saves upon loading.