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[Mel_Vixen]

Which in the end is only a convention for rogue-likes and many games make exceptions to that rule already. The engineitself can support it i guess.

[Rose]

It is, however, a limitation in the current engine, and would need some work for toady to change.

[Untelligent]

On starting skills: if we mod, say, dwarves to have starting skills, can migrants still come with a higher skill than the starting skill? Also, if a migrant comes and his skill is at that starting level but he doesn't use it, can it rust below the starting level?

With the new travel maps, do ambushes by predatory critters still work fine?

[Toady One]

So minotaurs will use the weapons of their victims. Can they use shields and armors, provided they are of the right size? Other creatures will have this ability? Is it in the raws?

We only needed weapons for minotaurs, so that's all that there is.  It wouldn't be much trouble, but it's not currently in.  We want to handle other creatures, especially civilized creatures, differently than the beasts, so that'll have to wait for more of the combat arc stuff for impromptu item snatching or for the Decemberish stuff for longer term equipment considerations.

Toady with the possible Mythology generator is there a chance that your long list if questions (why are we here, what are dreams) could also be fed into it so the answer could differ world to world with possible real game implications? (for example how Gods revere human beings). Will we ever see such world spanning randomisation?

Yeah, that's one of the main points of the mythology generator, and the answers are intended to be different each time.  It'll take a lot of work and underlying mechanics to make that meaningful, but that's the idea.  We are looking forward to people being at the places they go when they die and being able to visit and so on, like those myths where people try to rescue their loved ones from the land of the dead, and all of whatever else.

The starting skill values are awesome!  Is there any chance that in this version or an upcoming one, skills-per-race could be expanded further in the raws, like, goblin 'high master dodger' is better than dwarf 'high master dodger', or goblins learn dodge faster than dwarves, or some other way to represent that humans are better than dwarves at farming while dwarves are better at mining?

Yeah, I have no idea how that should actually work in the examples.  Attributes have a lot to do with apparent skill differences.  Then there's the matter of cultural influence leading to higher skill levels overall.  But I suppose there are some skills where we can say that the mind of a creature is suited to that specific skill independent of everything else, and it wouldn't be a big issue to separate out all the skill rates -- there are currently numeric skill rates independent of the skill which would just need to be separated by skill.

If minotaurs are getting revamped and giants and cyclops will too at some point, what about ettins?

Yeah, dragons and the hydra and the bronze colossus as well.  We have preliminary plans for them, but I won't have time this time around.  We had set out October for it before we wanted to move on.

Werewolves are of interest to me. Can we expect them to get some love from the new night creature features? Will they be transforming and living among humans any time soon?

Getting the night creature bases covered was the plan, and we wrote out notes for the main offenders, but there's no time left.  I'm not sure if we're continuing on with them in November, or if we'll have to wait until later.  From disappointment to disappointment, I know...  but we'll get some stuff done sometime.

I like it.  I'll miss the cool effects that were in the old one (like the unexplored fog sometimes dissapearing  from mountaintops and such when you can see them clearly, even if your vision is blocked from seeing the lower altitudes.)  But it seems to me that it would be an improvement overall.

I'm guessing the yellow gem up top is a time indicator?  Will that give weather info as well or just time?  What about rivers?  With the lower level map will we have to go around them now if we don't have swimming skill or are able to fly, or will the adventurer still be able to teleport over an otherwise uncross-able torrent of water?

You still get those effects on the world map, which I might add as a split screen option as you move around.  The top thingy is the sun and moon position indicator, yeah.  It also fogs out, but it doesn't do clouds.  We wanted to get to a star view but didn't get a chance.  Rivers are still teleportable until there are more options for crossing.

Will there be any sort of time abstraction in this release? It's not a necessity, given all the other cool stuff, but since being able to have a place to sleep at night was brought to the forefront, I was curious

Yeah, there'll be something.  It's one of the last things that definitely has to go in for this release, since night can be troubling.

Will adventurer still heal during fast travel?

It's the same as it has been, until there are more options.  Depending on how the sleep stuff works out, you might have to sleep instead of having that go away automatically.

Similarly, I would assume that mountain tiles remain impassable in travel mode?

Also, as a forward look when rivers are impassable and we can create adventurer sites - would we be able to create bridges that work in travel mode as well?

The mountains are impassible as before, yeah.  The bridge issue is kind of a difficult one.  I guess it could err on the side of allowing passage if the site connects the two sides in any way, but it would have to detect that at the time it saves or something.  At the same time, it might be more fair to force people to traverse player-made sites locally, so that you have to deal with whatever ends up living there and so on, and that would let it respect the local map.

Do you intend to show elevation on tile maps at any stage? Such as through subtle use of slight background colour deviation?

No plans for now.  I don't have a lot of colors available, though I could do maybe a Sentinel Worlds style blocks-within-blocks in ASCII and get sufficient resolution (with all colors and 4 inner shapes it would be 420 levels, though the ordering would look kind of arbitrary) without worrying about redoing the engine, but you'd need a separate view for that, which might not be satisfying.

On starting skills: if we mod, say, dwarves to have starting skills, can migrants still come with a higher skill than the starting skill? Also, if a migrant comes and his skill is at that starting level but he doesn't use it, can it rust below the starting level?

With the new travel maps, do ambushes by predatory critters still work fine?

I think the migrants will just have increased skills instead of blanking the skills and then adding, but I haven't tried altering dwarves.  Right now it's just an initial addition, so they'd rust as usual.  Since I added it as a hack for initial knowledge of intelligent megabeasts, it makes sense either way, more or less.  It makes less sense as you go more instinctual, though I have no idea on animals that learn skills from their parents.  I could add an option if there's time.

Yeah, we're happy with the ambush rates.  It hasn't needed too much tweaking because even in the currently released version, you were moving in the mid-level maps, it was just invisible.

[Eduren]

Thanks for the responses Toady. These adventure mode changes sound exciting,

[James.Denholm]

Do you intend to show elevation on tile maps at any stage? Such as through subtle use of slight background colour deviation?

No plans for now.  I don't have a lot of colors available, though I could do maybe a Sentinel Worlds style blocks-within-blocks in ASCII and get sufficient resolution (with all colors and 4 inner shapes it would be 420 levels, though the ordering would look kind of arbitrary) without worrying about redoing the engine, but you'd need a separate view for that, which might not be satisfying.

Specific reply comment: I suppose that's a fair point. Perhaps required colours/indicators could be lessened by using values as relative to the player's current elevation, and/or using a lower accuracy (only having a different indicator every however many values, whatever the technical term is for that), but I'm sure you've probably considered this previously.

[Toady One]

Yeah, the main issue is trying to maintain the biome/site information as the main information displayed in a tile.  Then you are really limited even in your use of the 7 background colors, since you have to watch out for conflicts that render symbols invisible (or force you to brighten the foreground color).  Having a button that switches back and forth is feasible, but then you have to do that every so often and it's a little weird.  Or there can be another split screen or box, but that makes it harder to match the same square where it occurs on different parts of the screen, at least farther away.  If seeing the elevation became more important, I'm not sure among those methods or whatever else which would work best.  I guess other solutions might be enlarging squares to 2x2 and displaying 4 pieces of information for each one, but then you can't see very far (it'd be 5 up and down on the default 80x25 window, assuming you lose 3 rows to the sun bar and text).

[FuzzyDoom]

This is just a general question:

If you got to choose 1 thing to add in, and it would would perfectly the way you wanted it, what would it be?

[Neonivek]

Thanks for answering our questions Toady! The mythology generator sounds even more exciting, though it seems so very very far away.

Toady what are your views on lineage in terms of Great (or perhaps terrible) family lines? In as so far as having great people give birth to great people and vise versa

[Flaede]

Thanks for answering our questions Toady! The mythology generator sounds even more exciting, though it seems so very very far away.

Toady what are your views on lineage in terms of Great (or perhaps terrible) family lines? In as so far as having great people give birth to great people and vise versa

Or great (but incestuous) royal lines that start great... but end with everyone being everyone's cousin, and all speaking with sssibilance.

[Neonivek]

Yeah

Great/Terrible Lines as almost forces in it of itself

[darkflagrance]

Yeah

Great/Terrible Lines as almost forces in it of itself

One can probably code the mechanics better by better simulation of genetic traits, such as boosts to leadership, or strength, or military strategy, as well as dormant genetic disabilities like insanity that become exposed as families in general become in-bred.

Really, a lot of the drama of powerful families is the same drama as normal families that no one hears about because people like to keep it secret and it doesn't affect as many people, magnified by the tendency of royal families to be elite and exclusive.

[Mel_Vixen]

Yeah iirc that kind of genetics was the plan but came a bit short(?) due to the fact that toady wanted to release the 31.x version . 

[Neonivek]

Well the problem is going purely on genetics you get what you currently do.

Crazy randomness with no plot cohesion.

Frankly I think "Leaders" such as kings should have more of a sex drive an actually stride to get a genetic heir before jumping infront of arrows.

[Mel_Vixen]

I meant coherent disabilities and recessive genes Neonivek.

Anyway the Leaders and theyr families have normally good amounts of Money and food. For that you can supply a good number of children and woman (a number of wifes, curtisans and whatever) which will most likely never starve and are thanks to a overall good health more resistant to illness of any kind.
Because these people normally dont "work" in a traditional sense they have also much spare-time in which they can learn stuff like arts, tactics, organisation, writing and reading, math, fencing etc. and they have the money to buy teachers (and doctors for that matter).

If you have the money and the education you can also get a better job in the society like being a judge, general or whatever because you can just buy this position or you are the only one who fits the requirements.

That these people are more likely to survive and be remarkable comes with the money. Naturally there has to be some kind of inheritance code that regulates how stuff like money is managed after the death of the family head. A strict but flexible code would work for humans for example like that 3/4 of the wealth goes to the first-born son and everything else to the rest of the family if the head of the family didnt have some favourite like his 2 nephew on the Mothers side because that one is a great warrior and liked among the population.