Footkerchief handled a lot of the questions this time in his earlier post (my answers wouldn't be any different aside from extra rambling), and there were a few others that were addressed in the thread as well. I didn't address some questions that would fit better in the suggestion forum. It's difficult to find time for everything.
are raw material quantities going to be altered? Specifically, wood and stone. The fact that a wood earring takes as much wood as a wood bed or door seems like it would have a huge influence on item values
Lots of things will impact prices over time, but I can only do so much for the first release. I haven't altered those industries. I think it would make sense to do so, but stacking concerns probably need to be addressed first.
What does this mean? Specifically, what is a "fair" and what is a "market" in the context of Dwarf Fortress?
Markets will be weekly (or more) happenings in the town locations and be as much for the surrounding agricultural communities as much as traveling merchants and town producers. Fairs will probably be annual and attract more merchants from more locations. There's the whole issue with safe conduct and exemptions from tolls/taxes etc. that should accompany them, but we don't have enough backing for that yet.
So in the flurry of the caravan and army arcs, are you going to rough out the dwarven, elven and goblin civs so there's something for people to see when they venture out to those sites? Or does that play into too much political/civ-specific design you don't want to get bogged down in yet?
What kind of structures/towns will dwarves and elves have if they get visible settlements in the next update?
There will most likely be something there into the army arc. It's not in for the next update.
what sort of development hurdles do you face in trying to implement aimed ranged attacks or attacking prone enemies from a range (and thus choosing which of several targets in the same tile to attack)
Nothing significant. I remember feeling a little rushed and passing up on aimed ranged attacks the first time through, but there's nothing aside from time stopping it from happening.
will there variable currency values and systems?
Currently, the money is all the same, just usable in different places. In the future, might the value of a civilization's currency depend on the state of it relative to the seller? For instance, money from a very far away place the seller rarely trades with would be worth less than normal, those from a collapsed civilization would only be worth the material it's made of, and money from a civilization that collapsed hundreds of years ago would cease functioning like currency and be valued as an artifact.
I haven't had to tackle any of this yet, but something's going to have to give anyway, since it is annoying how it works now.
Will you be able to fake scarcity, and thus increase price, by secretly hoarding goods?
It's not quite clear to me at this point, because it depends on how the traders see availability when they arrive at your site. They need to be not entirely stupid about it -- with a computer game the easiest way to do that is to make them know everything. Then the issue becomes disguising the information from them correctly. If they can only see what you bring to your depot, I need to make sure that doesn't make them totally gullible.
1) Will we get a return to differentiated sites for different civilizations next release? E.g. human towns being different from dwarven fortresses and goblin towers?
2) With the caravan arc starting, will towns have workshops corresponding to the professions of their citizens?
1) Nope, not yet
2) Yeah, I should be getting to that soon as soon as I clean up what's left of the new dwarf mode industries/livestock stuff
Is there point in wallowing in the economy now? Will time be found soon for toys?
I dunno. I don't have a timetable for things, and right now the plan is to do caravan -> bugs -> army. I've wanted to do instruments/toys/etc. at parties especially for a long time, but it hasn't happened yet.
One of the major annoyances I have had with post-sprawl worldgen is that civilizations are allowed to overlap their territories, and you end up with several civilizations stacked on top of each other. You seemed to allude to this a while ago when you said that "the upcoming association of hamlets/villages to the town markets is going to force me to come to terms with loose boundaries a bit, as will the desire to set up some kind of difference in available trade goods." I wasn't very clear on what you meant by this; did you intend civilizations to have these overlapping territories, or are there technical problems with giving civs clear, well-defined borders? If so, what are they, and how high a priority is it for you to fix the problem?
Overlaps are intended, but only in the current influence maps and entity population mixes that now occur for the next release in a site. The "civilization" territories represent culture and everything else right now, rather than just political boundaries. Settlements aren't intended to be homogenous. The problem is that settlements and castles get placed all together without any respect to what should be the powers attempting to control territory -- we don't have enough political information and it's probably not going to happen until the army arc.
Will we ever have ghosts that appear even if you bury your dead properly? Because I want ghosts but I like having elaborate tombs. Maybe ghosts with unfinished business, like if they were murdered. Of course, we need murder first. Which would be awesome.
Ever is a strong word, he he he. We had thought of putting one such instance for the first release, though, yeah. So I think it'll happen at some point before eternity comes around.
With the new caravan focus on trading, will we get any improvements to the fortress mode trade screen?
It's going to have to be different, anyway, to convey the new information. I'm not sure how it'll be yet though.
Any thoughts on how those things are going to work when applied to a fortress race? Would a sheep-men civ be able to shave eachother to produce wool trade goods? Lizard or birdmen lay eggs and carry them around like babies? Or is it currently looking like they'll pretty much ignore that kind of stuff and make an omlette out of their young?
There are a number of jobs that aren't applied to fortress critters or thinking critters in general. I haven't supported those because the dwarves don't have them and I imagine it could go either way on fort races which have the available properties, so it is extra work. It's possible that a fort race with eggs just wouldn't breed because it doesn't recognize nest boxes. In those cases you'd just want to leave the eggs out until such a time that they are supported.
Will that oil burn when exposed to fire/heat? Could we also have candles and torches from this update?
We won't get candles or torches until the general lighting improvements. Vegetable oil in general isn't super-flammable compared to other gassy/oily things, as far as I know, but we'll use whatever numbers we can find.
I really, really wish we could get some fix to animals' pathfinding now, otherwise the 16 new domestic species will murder the FPS, and to add insult to injury, make all the hallways extremely crowded. Some kind of fenced pastures perhaps? Or allow us to create a special alert+burrow for domestic animals that would prevent them from pathing? Please?
There's going to be something. Leaning toward a zone as with pit/pond now, but where they just stay because they get their foods there. Ideally they'd go stray or need to be tended or something, but that would be for later. Having a dwarf lead the newly penned/pastured critter to the zone is enough work-credit toward animal herding now, I guess. Fences are fair, but I dunno if we're going there yet or not.
Are there plans to make changes to animal/unit list to better handle large number of units (i.e., filters, searching, sorting ... all that kinds of "boring business application" perks)
The stocks screen is certainly going to get something. The unit screen most likely as well.
Hey Toady, can you say what the 16 new animals will be? or do you want it to be a surprise?
"Assorted animals and thinking beings?" Care to elaborate on some of those?
People are having too much fun speculating in that other thread for me to interrupt the process.
How will inherently lonely megabeasts find mates? Will other megabeasts reproduce? And will FBs and titans be able to inherit egg laying?
Until critters move around on the world map, which is coming but isn't here yet, we just have megabeast reproduction in world gen and eggs sitting around that ostensibly come around from whatever. I don't know that titans or FBs will ever lay eggs as a matter of course, because we don't really have an explanation for what they are or what their continuing role in the world is.
Toady, will eggs have a stockpile option, and if so will it be considered food or an animal for stockpile purposes?
also will dwarfs be able to eat eggs or are they off limits.
It is the food stockpile, and they have their own category. Right now they are only cookable, rather than raw edible.
Now that trade routes depend on availability of roads (do they?), will fast-traveling over roads in Adventurer Mode confer reasonable bonuses to traveling speed (or penalties for moving off the road)? For both adventurers and merchants, it would make sense for walking on road to be easier, faster, and safer than hacking through wilderness.
Related: Will dwarven roads over mountains squares be accessible through fast-traveling in Adventurer Mode?
Fast travel speeds aren't going to be different from local travel speeds, for consistency, as close as I can make them anyway. So if traveling on roads should be faster, it has to be for a local reason. Right now, traveling on any terrain is the same speed. When we get to underbrush in the dev page, the movement speeds should be properly impacted. I'm not sure that we'll get to any of that this time, though the grass density information helps set us up for it.
If I steal a dragon egg, will it hatch? And will the baby dragon think I'm its mom, or try to kill me?
I realize that we'll probably be able to raise dragons and rocs from eggs in Fortress mode, but will we be able to do so in ADVENTURE MODE? Since there will probably be horse riding, I don't think it's too far off.
Right now it won't hatch, but it could still turn out any way since I'm not finished yet. But yeah, as more pet support goes in, various stuff is going to happen.
According to this pic ruc's eggs are enormous. How do we steal that?!
Also do this mean that all the animals that get eggs get lairs too?
He he he, you can probably put it in your "magic" backpack, yeah. Later you'll probably need a stretcher and bearers or something.
The regular birds that have eggs won't get lairs. I'm not quite sure which critters you were referring to.
Will you add any of the new craftable materials (wool, clay), but also some older ones (horn, teeth, pearls, feathers) as prerequisites for artifacts? And the other way around, will any of the new items (pottery, porcelain) be artifactable?
Wool is the only one I've finished, and it made it in for artifacts. I haven't put teeth or horns in for artifacts. We'll have to see if the clay labors come up. It should be happening fairly soon.
Will any creatures ever adopt an adventurer like cats do in Fort Mode? Also might some juveniles get an [IMPRESSIONABLE] tag or similar? Birds, that are about to hatch from all these crazy new eggs, are particularily good candidates for that I think.
It certainly seems reasonable. I'm not sure when we'd get to imprinting or anything like that. Having all the extra animals around towns etc. is going to help, but we're just starting up with adv mode pets/animals so we'll have to see how that goes.
Given that some of the new creatures and plants going in the game are going to have related economic benefits and produce tradable goods other than meat n' things, will we be able to buy rhino milk from the elves?
Is long distance milk trading ever practical? It doesn't seem like the sort of thing that would keep well. Cheese is already traded if I remember, though I don't recall if elves make cheese. They are missing a number of professions and probably will until we get their giant trees settled.
If I throw an egg will it's shell break and spill it's insides?
There are lots of items that should break when they hit the ground, but I haven't done anything new with item damage yet. The egg is certainly a prime candidate for that sort of thing.
[OP statement about pathfinding/tiles] was about 6 months ago. Have these been on hold because Baughn's busy?
I haven't done any of the ESV items yet, so #1 vote hauling is really the one to be thinking about, in terms of scheduling, and I don't even know for that. I managed to squeeze a bit out of the profiler, but that's not done yet. I won't be able to do anything with tiles since the addition of map tiles and item tiles will blow out the atlas, and I don't know how to go to multiple atlases without breaking what he has done.
Do you find the recent trend of megathreads that unite all known suggestions on a given topic into a single post to be helpful?
If so, are there any topics that you wish had a megathread that you haven't seen one for yet?
I like colors and well-organized posts, and I imagine if I missed something I'd be likely to see it again in a megathread OP, but I still read through all the other threads, so I'm not sure in the end what the effect is. I don't have any suggestions for things I'd like people to talk about.
Now that we have a readily available source of feathers, will arrows and bolts require them? Will they not be required, but provide an advantage if used? If that won't be the case in this update, will it be eventually/soon?
It isn't that way now, and I can't answer soon to anything. Fletching is reasonable. It might come up if we start building dwarf mode items from more materials. There's probably a point where that becomes unworkable, but I don't think arrows are at the point where adding feathers to their production would cause trouble.
Will only cows grass or other animals like horses and goats too? Do you have a food/meat gathering ratio as tag (i.e. a cow that grazes down 3 tiles grows 30kg of meat)? Do animals need water now too?
There will be many eating animals, but I'm not sure which ones exactly, and I haven't decided how it will work. I hope that small animals won't eat as much as large animals, anyway, even if it isn't that way for anybody right now. I'm not sure about water either, but I should have some information soon.
But it does lead to the question... are there any actual gameplay differences between the different kinds of grass? Is it just different names depending on biome, or do they have other effects? Is there a point to the different types beyond the names?
It's like the other atmospheric stuff at this point.
Are the various types of Grass in the raws, or are they still hardcoded?
It is all in the raws.
Will longland-grass yield hay/straw as side product?
We're going to have hay once they use the meadows they set aside in the villages, certainly, but I haven't done this yet. Straw after processing in the farmer's workshop or however it's going to work is probably faster to put in. Once I get through all the livestock stuff in the coming days, and the beasts are eating properly, we'll see if we need to let you collect food for them in advance of winter/sieges.
Part of menus are not using full screen space - for example main menu, trading menu etc. Is it by bug/by design/sth that is planned to do but less important than other stuff?
You mean if you go beyond the initial 80x25 grid resizing the window? We'll get to that eventually.
With all these new animals any plans to diversify the biomes in terms of biodiversity or food stock? As I said before Dwarf Fortress doesn't handle variety well
If you answered this before please skip it. In fact by all means skip this question if you want, it just somehow seems off to me.
I don't understand the question. The spatial ranges of animals are a new addition for next time, but the regions always had different critters (when there were enough available to pick from).
I was eagerly waiting the monthly report to know what are the plans for this month, but nothing was told. Since the animal sponsorship we don't hear a thing about the caravan arc. Is it on hold? What are the plans for this month?
There just aren't any new plans yet this month. The unexpected amount of sponsorship drive and the holidays made things a little slower than anticipated, so we still have to do things like clay and vegetable oil. Once I'm caught up I'll put something up in the dev log.
I probably should have said "are you planning to allow the player to choose the material used for rock crafts in the next release?" I'm pretty sure it's planned to be done eventually, but It'd be nice to know when it's planned to come, ie. during the caravan arc, after the bugfixing push, etc.
I don't know. I don't have any answers for timeline questions other than what we've said about the caravan arc, bugfixing and army stuff after that. Someone brought up the ESV stuff in response to your question, and I'm still not sure when it's going to be worked in. It won't necessarily be after all of the army stuff, but I'm definitely doing the caravan arc then bugs before other things.
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Topic: Future of the Fortress: The Development Page (Read 1612722 times)