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[Psieye]

Ah, so you meant features interesting for adventure mode but only flavour in Fortress mode. So long as I get some natural water underground so plants grow down there, I don't care whether it's a river, pool or ocean in the caverns. Likewise, I care little in Fortress mode for interesting ruins and mysterious constructions.

I view it as the vast majority of the caverns is like the current "dry" caverns, which are still filled with trees and stuff blocking your path. It'd be neat (a dwarf fortress kind of neat) if there were biomes underground so you'd have desert undergrounds you could embark on, with underground but desert creatures, but we'd need some way of telling underground biomes on embark mode.

I see, yeah you're seeing it entirely from adventurer view yes. To my knowledge, underground plants cannot exist at all in fortress mode unless there's some underground water on your map. Doesn't matter where, but it must exist for caverns to have plants. That doesn't apply in adventurer mode of course. That knowledge may be out of date, I've never deliberately generated caverns iwht 0% and 1% water content to try it out.

[Spoonfeed]

I see, yeah you're seeing it entirely from adventurer view yes. To my knowledge, underground plants cannot exist at all in fortress mode unless there's some underground water on your map. Doesn't matter where, but it must exist for caverns to have plants. That doesn't apply in adventurer mode of course. That knowledge may be out of date, I've never deliberately generated caverns iwht 0% and 1% water content to try it out.

I have(on accident), and there is still plenty of foliage down there, no water.

[Kogan Loloklam]

It's still easy to implement. With the replacement, Strength can be different in different parts, and so can toughness. Toughness for breaks can be represented by bone elasticity and density, which we probably already track. Toughness for slashes is the fat.

Again, I disagree. Some people get cuts easier than others. if anything, large amounts of fat seem to have the opposite effect on skin thickness, and cutting into parts that bleed is easier.
By this thought, we could replace slashing toughness with dirtiness, since the dirt would reinforce the skin.

It also goes into bruising. Someone with high toughness isn't quick to bruise. It seems to me that fatness makes people quicker to bruise than normal.
How do you propose to track this? Arterial wall elasticity and density? I know, we can go ahead and do that, but give it a different name!

Let's see, it'd be "tough" to bruise them, so let's call it "Toughness".
Since we have that attribute, we can tie it to bone density and elasticity as well. And since we got that, let's make skin resistance part of it. That makes it nice and easy.

[Funk]

rember to add Bone density(link to Strength/Muscle mass)
 

on Muscle mass vs agility just rember that muscle cells can increase number or size

[monk12]

Toady with contextual end games or end career I suppose (EG, if you travel from town to town, you're a trader because of your actions.), will be be seeing this with Fortress End goals? As in if we produce a lot of arms and armor, we get to be known for this or produce a lot of brew we become a known brewery? Something other then the generally forced  New Capital thing that currently happens.

This would make me so happy, especially if it impacts what caravans request from you. Yeah guys, I've only sold you green glass goblets the first three years, of course I can fill your order for silk socks!

[dree12]

It's still easy to implement. With the replacement, Strength can be different in different parts, and so can toughness. Toughness for breaks can be represented by bone elasticity and density, which we probably already track. Toughness for slashes is the fat.

Again, I disagree. Some people get cuts easier than others. if anything, large amounts of fat seem to have the opposite effect on skin thickness, and cutting into parts that bleed is easier.
By this thought, we could replace slashing toughness with dirtiness, since the dirt would reinforce the skin.

It also goes into bruising. Someone with high toughness isn't quick to bruise. It seems to me that fatness makes people quicker to bruise than normal.
How do you propose to track this? Arterial wall elasticity and density? I know, we can go ahead and do that, but give it a different name!

Let's see, it'd be "tough" to bruise them, so let's call it "Toughness".
Since we have that attribute, we can tie it to bone density and elasticity as well. And since we got that, let's make skin resistance part of it. That makes it nice and easy.

And I disagree. Why have all that tied to a single Toughness when we can have skin thickness? Take your average human, ie.

Code: [Select]

            Head
            ⇕(Neck)
Left Arm ⇔ UB ⇔ Right Arm
            ⇕
Left Leg ⇔ LB ⇔ Right Leg
lop off everything but the Head, UB, LB, and left limbs, and give him a toughness of 1200. (s)He is a tough human in the current system. But, since we already track bones in bodyparts (you can see this by butchering), we can expand the notion:

Code: [Select]

            Head (Skull, density: 900, elasticity: 900)
            ⇕(Neck)
Left Arm ⇔ UB
(humerous, D:1300, E:1300)
Left Leg ⇔ LB
(femur, D:1200, E:1400)
This might work out to a Toughness of 1200. But, as you can see, our human is much more vulernable near the head areas, and his leg is much more resiliant to blunt hits than slashing hits.

That same reasoning can be applied to strength. Endurence is more of Willpower plus calorie system, so that can be replaced too.

[The Architect]

Will you eventually differentiate cultures' and species' combat styles? Some styles and armaments are especially effective against some other styles and armaments.
Let's say that a dwarven civilization fond of using heavy war axes and broadswords and wearing heavy plate armor is at war with an elven society using light armor and rapiers with bucklers. This would be an interesting feature if it varied from civilization to civilization, and moreover the elves would slaughter the big, strong dwarves if they managed to ambush them in close combat.

Will differences in diet and the wealth/comfort of a society eventually affect the strengths and weaknesses of its occupants?
A few examples:

A hypothetical society went through a period of famine lasting nearly a decade 40 years ago. Many of the current adults were children at the time, and their bodies would have been permanently weakened by nutritional diseases as a result. They could have decreased mobility, would certainly have lesser bone density, etc. Personality traits would also reflect this experience, such as the famed inability to let go of the 1930's Depression mentality many of us have encountered in older members of our own American society.

Some goblin tribes have been engaged in tribal warfare for hundreds of years (think Germanic tribes or Mongols), and have experienced an accelerated period of natural selection. The genes of those who were strong, intelligent, and early to develop and act sexually would have prevailed. Should they unite, they'd be a force to be reckoned.

A militaristic society conquers a sizable empire, and settles down to enjoy itself. After 3 generations or more, the values and strengths of the older generations have been lost. They may still have great technological military strengths (consider the stirrup), but their mental attitudes and behaviors would have deteriorated. They would lack developed physical strength and discipline, mental fortitude developed through important decision making and so on. Should a trying time come along, their luxurious lifestyle would surely make its effects apparent.

Can you give us some way of comparing beasts in our menagerie?
I know you want to avoid immersion-breaking features like "strength of 21, weight 220 stones, fat% 20, agility 15" and so on. But surely dwarves can look at one cow and another, put them through their paces, and get some idea of their comparative physical and mental attributes. The breeding system (which is pretty incredibly cool at first glance when considering its potential and all of the nice features you have built in like generational tracking) is rather useless without this basic ability.

I am sure when you get back around to agriculture you'll eventually address diseases and things like birth defects or genetic defects (hereditary blindness), so I'll forbear to add a fourth question today.

[Cruxador]

Will you eventually differentiate cultures' and species' combat styles? Some styles and armaments are especially effective against some other styles and armaments.
Let's say that a dwarven civilization fond of using heavy war axes and broadswords and wearing heavy plate armor is at war with an elven society using light armor and rapiers with bucklers. This would be an interesting feature if it varied from civilization to civilization, and moreover the elves would slaughter the big, strong dwarves if they managed to ambush them in close combat.

In the latest DF Talk, he referred to martial arts as things that would be largely entity dependent, so there will certainly be some variation there. How much that effects actual military remains to be seen, of course.

Can you give us some way of comparing beasts in our menagerie?
I know you want to avoid immersion-breaking features like "strength of 21, weight 220 stones, fat% 20, agility 15" and so on. But surely dwarves can look at one cow and another, put them through their paces, and get some idea of their comparative physical and mental attributes. The breeding system (which is pretty incredibly cool at first glance when considering its potential and all of the nice features you have built in like generational tracking) is rather useless without this basic ability.

We already have such descriptive text relating to relative size, fat, and muscle. I don't know what more you need.

[Footkerchief]

We already have such descriptive text relating to relative size, fat, and muscle. I don't know what more you need.

They're tucked away inside a large paragraph, which is part of a giant wall of text, which is at least one keypress away from any list of animals.  Efficient presentation of data can make or break a game mechanic.

[cephalo]

Wow, just looked at the village screenshot. It looks great, but I just realized why humans were building soooo many bridges in world gen, when I knew there weren't that many rivers to cross. They have to get over each and every stagnant pool! Hmmm, I'm thinking that it would be much easier to just fill the pond in. I recognize that making the road go around the ponds is a non-trivial undertaking programmatically, but I have to say that all those bridges look kinda goofy. This is true not just on the map, but in legends mode 99 percent of human history is building bridges!

[tps12]

Some goblin tribes have been engaged in tribal warfare for hundreds of years (think Germanic tribes or Mongols), and have experienced an accelerated period of natural selection.

Uh...

[Maxxeh]

I think the bridge building is an effect of the kind of roads appearing. It seems we're getting pretty straight American roads.
I live in a part of England were it's all countryside, with hills everywhere, and we have very windy roads! The roads are built around fields because they came first! The large bodies of water are always driven around, and any hills are either bypassed, or travelled over.
Especially in such an early age that the DF lore takes place, the amount of bridges would not be normal. People would almost certainly walk around pools and obstacles, unless it was a main city trade road, or the pools were very large. You have to keep in mind, roads started as areas travelled by foot to get to different towns or fields. bridges and roads that cut through/across obstacles would only be used if really needed. (like a bridge over a long canyon, illogical to walk around.)

The way a dwarf creates a path when an area is busy, is the kind of effect that would be more realistic. Bendy roads would add alot of character to the world. The problem is, hills don't have a negative effect on the player, or NPCs. so there is no NEED to have roads that avoid them! perhaps trade carts should have a limit to the amount of rough ground they can traverse, or an increase in thirst and hunger when travelling uphil alot? lol.

Just my 2c, whether relevent, logical, possible, or not! I'm no expert

[Jiri Petru]

Just posting here to say I absolutely love the new landscape!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And yeah, the lakes/ponds are weird. Any chance you'll get rid of them, Toady? (except in marshlands, I guess). I suppose they could now easily be replaced by man-made fishponds, under the same system that builds fields, pastures or orchards...

[Untelligent]

Wait, do you mean actually removing the ponds from the game in non-marshlands? That's just silly, then we wouldn't have aboveground water sources in places without rivers.

[MaDeR Levap]

Why not just destroy any pond on way of road? Anyway road are glitchy now (bridges to nowhere etc), so I hope Toady with this development already took care of that.

And anyway, I noted that he used a few embarks to screenshot it. Well... not anytime soon, but I feel someone should expand arena mode. Hint hint.