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[Neonivek]

what, exactly is stopping them from rampaging out through your house, and then on to the streets?

For the most part desire and nature though intellectually a sudden uprising would gain the attention of a stronger force.

Though for nature:

It is like for example: "What is stopping a vulture from just killing its prey?"

Really nothing a vulture has more then enough power to kill its prey, I believe some do.

As well Cats live in communities but they arn't a coherant unit (or rather... they live together but they don't do things together). So just because creatures live in large communities with eachother it doesn't mean they are all watching out for eachother's interest or working together.

Not that I wouldn't want to see Nightcreatures just up an deciding they more then overpower a town and uttarly destroy it over night.

[Mel_Vixen]

Well with vampires and were-creatures i hope there will be Underground conspiracys and cults around these things. Not to mention the noble restaurant that abduct young girls to infect them with werewolfism so they can make stew out of them.

[NW_Kohaku]

what, exactly is stopping them from rampaging out through your house, and then on to the streets?

For the most part desire and nature though intellectually a sudden uprising would gain the attention of a stronger force.

Though for nature:

It is like for example: "What is stopping a vulture from just killing its prey?"

Really nothing a vulture has more then enough power to kill its prey, I believe some do.

As well Cats live in communities but they arn't a coherant unit (or rather... they live together but they don't do things together). So just because creatures live in large communities with eachother it doesn't mean they are all watching out for eachother's interest or working together.

Not that I wouldn't want to see Nightcreatures just up an deciding they more then overpower a town and uttarly destroy it over night.

But that doesn't exist in the game right now...

The problem I am foreseeing is this one:

The river ran pretty close to the gates, and when I walked out, we had a little alligator trouble. Well, the swordsman had more trouble than I did and ended up in the middle of the river where I couldn't help. The alligator became Skinnyrends and I left on my quest. I found a bronze breastplate in the first chamber, with no sign of the bridegroom other than the mess. I found him in the next room and lopped his head off with my axe. He wasn't alone however. The dark creature was still living there! This would be much more difficult. After getting my weapon stuck in her shoulder, she bit my arm and kept shaking it repeatedly. I broke free after losing a lot of blood, and that's when she took her copper meat cleaver to my toe. I fled, leaving my toe and axe behind.

 I made it to a market just before nightfall and the shopkeeper graciously let me sleep on the floor overnight. In the morning I gave up my coins, my breastplate and half of my clothes to get a bronze great axe. My right arm was still useless, but I could manage the weapon with one hand. I went back to the castle by the river to report my success... a technical success, anyway, since the quest was for the bridegroom. As I stepped through the doors of the keep, I witnessed a scene of horror. The alligator Skinnyrends was inside, and the lord was next to his own head on the bloody stone floor. One of the lord's soldiers was holding his own, but I managed to put down the murderous beast myself. I reported my news of the spouse to the soldier, and with my late rescue in the keep, I became a greatly respected figure. Unfortunately, I would need to travel to a castle far away to quest for further glory. Outside the keep, I noticed an elf prisoner. I also noticed his nose was missing. A forensic examination of the keep revealed the body part among the remains. I needed somebody to travel with me in the wilds to help dissuade night attacks on the long journey, so I invited the prisoner along. We made it to the second castle after sunfall and slept in one of the towers.

So, basically, an alligator, because there was nothing particularly stopping it from doing so, just happened to amble into the lord's court and eat the lord... 

The alligator is supposed to only eat the things that come close to its river, but apparently, it just randomly wandered while still "within range" of the game to keep calculating, and happened to randomly wander close enough to the lord to get a kill, and nobody happened to stop him beforehand.

That's a bit of a problem if every single random critter down in the catacombs can just amble on up and eat half the town while you're taking a snooze.  (Especially if it only happens in the parts of town you happen to occupy, because those are the only ones where the simulation is running.) 

It's not an organized or intentional behavior, it's just that the game right now doesn't recognize there's a problem when there are hippos in the river until one hippo gets it in its mind that it feels like human tonight. 

[Neonivek]

I've heard of some hillarious deaths of royals (including one that was "Drinking and driving") but I find picturing an alligator walking up to the court and swallowing the emporer as particularly hillariousl.

So yeah you don't mean in world gen you mean through gameplay.

I guess he needs to write new codes.

[Rexfelum]

Devlog stuff.

So, basically, an alligator, because there was nothing particularly stopping it from doing so, just happened to amble into the lord's court and eat the lord... 

The alligator is supposed to only eat the things that come close to its river, but apparently, it just randomly wandered while still "within range" of the game to keep calculating, and happened to randomly wander close enough to the lord to get a kill, and nobody happened to stop him beforehand.

That's a bit of a problem if every single random critter down in the catacombs can just amble on up and eat half the town while you're taking a snooze.  (Especially if it only happens in the parts of town you happen to occupy, because those are the only ones where the simulation is running.) 

It's not an organized or intentional behavior, it's just that the game right now doesn't recognize there's a problem when there are hippos in the river until one hippo gets it in its mind that it feels like human tonight.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the cited example wasn't so much "the simulation is still running," as "there's something weird when you load/unload a site."  There had been lots of reports of "sleepwalking" (here was mine) where beings would suddenly appear in an inappropriate location within an area after you slept and awoke.  I believe that there's something in the abstraction when the "camera" looks away that leads to problems like this.

It would still be a problem, of course, whatever the cause.

--Rexfelum

[Untelligent]

It's hard to tell apart catacombs from dungeons because there is no coffins or chains.

I think the dungeons are mostly large, rectangular rooms (noticeable in the first dev picture) and the catacombs are mostly winding corridors with a few rooms here and there (as in pic three).

[NW_Kohaku]

Well, whether you are awake or asleep, it's still "the simulation", but that's getting into semantics.

Anyway, yes, that's what I'm worried about - either sewer gators or zombies that get displaced during the accelerated simulation during sleep, or else just plain people having basements that connect directly to the catacombs, so when they go down to the cellar to grab some wine, they happen to walk into sight range of a zombie who chases them upstairs.  Then that zombie who happens to be in a place he isn't "supposed to be" will just keep doing some periodic aimless wandering, and happen to walk out into the streets, and start eating the brains of the random villagers on the street, potentially killing someone important while your character is doing something totally unrelated.

This was one of the problems in TES: Oblivion, as well.  Some characters would hang out at the docks, but mud crabs would randomly spawn at the waterside, and occasionally, they'd manage a kill on a named peasant character, and potentially automatically fail any quest those characters were associated with.  There was even one noble who made weekly trips from one town to another with a single bodyguard, and if you happened to be near her path at those times, monsters could spawn near her and manage to kill her without you ever knowing she or the monsters had been there.

Having some sort of "solid barrier" like having the cities themselves being a different "area" that has a area transition door so that creatures generally cannot spawn inside a city makes sure those civilians and monsters stay separate, so that quest-participants stay alive. 

In DF, of course, few of those procedurally generated characters have any importance at all that we, as players, do not assign to them (although one can always hope that somewhere down the road, the random peasants will start getting procedural personalities that actually manifest in their daily schedule and dialogue), and DF has a very definite "Life is Cheap" mentality, but it would be nice if, after buying a house in the city, you wouldn't have to immediately clean out the sewers in the area around that house or else have all your neighbors die of sewer gator attacks. 

[Mel_Vixen]

Well if your citys is know to have daleks and cyberman .... wait wrong continuity .... Aligators and Giantrats in the sewers i would guess most people would grate the sewers off or have raids of the Guards down there ever so often to clean out the upper level(s).

[monk12]

Will curses be associated with particular creatures, or will they be associated with particular areas, or both?

For example, lets take the obvious "living death" curse. Do creatures suffer from the curse because they have been attacked/cursed by a certain creature (as is the case with most "infection" kinds of zombie apocalypse, or vampires) or do they suffer because they died in a certain area, perhaps without taking precautions (burial on unhallowed ground in an evil biome, for instance)?

[Mel_Vixen]

Well if the system is syndrome based you can expect many things, including plants, turning you into stuff. It depends how the curse is applied and that can be expanded. The Poison framework is actually made for this althought it was "material" based till now. The two things that have to change to make "general area of effect curses (say in spherical lands)" is decoupling the effect from a visible "material" and to add one or two new ways of infection like affecting a certain area. It shouldnt be that hard since the framework is rather databaseish. 
For a gorgon you would need just need a "gaze" attack that actually would be some kind of "instant" projectile. "Cursed" objects would be as if they are coated in some or another contact-poison, althought the "curse" would need to evade protective layers like cloth.

If you wonder now if this curses stuff means that you can create rabbies i actually have to say that, i think, it would work more or less, although having them based on a material poison would be in my eyes more realistic for some cases. The thing is that the curse/illness has to be able to propagate itself and that may be biggest thing in this issue. It also, in case of an "normal" illness, shouldnt alter you to species.

I guess we might also get a new "Creature class", we already have "General_Poison" but a "General_Curse" would be nice to have. A way for nesting and coupling different classes could be needed in the future.

[hermes]

most or even all of the curses will be randomly created during world generation

If I'm reading this right, I really like the sound of this; being beset upon by creatures with powers that you can only understand through experience, undead that differ from world to world... more and more DF is bringing the curiosity of adventure back into gaming, this has to be one of the best dev tangents.

What aspects of curses might be randomised?  Constitution, strength, appearance, names, other things entirely?

[Lovechild]

Will the new night creatures be hardcoded (like the current ones) or will they be placed in the raws (and thus be removable for modders)?

[Areyar]

Will the new night creatures be hardcoded (like the current ones) or will they be placed in the raws (and thus be removable for modders)?

ahum...

05/02/2011  The first step is to add "curses", which might be based on or a subset of the current syndrome system used for poisons, and to use these to replace the skeleton and zombie flags. Even though most or even all of the curses will be randomly created during world generation, there should still be raws for them that support everything that's going on for modders as well. The old skeleton and zombie flags should be able to be legacy'd in for old saves. Once the framework is done, we'll start adding new sorts of night creatures.

That means "No, the nightcreatures will be procedural and their condition equivalent to a syndrome."

[tfaal]

Alligator concerns

This issue is not fundamentally related to the current one. In that version, alligators were not fundamentally intended to exist in forts. That alligator became a historical figure by killing someone, and a naive simulation meant that historical figures got corralled into forts. These kinds of creatures will exist for the fundamental purpose of occasionally terrorizing the city-folk, and while Toady's code is scarcely bug-free, I think we'll probably see that happen to a reasonable extent.

[Caldfir]

Alligator concerns

This issue is not fundamentally related to the current one. In that version, alligators were not fundamentally intended to exist in forts. That alligator became a historical figure by killing someone, and a naive simulation meant that historical figures got corralled into forts. These kinds of creatures will exist for the fundamental purpose of occasionally terrorizing the city-folk, and while Toady's code is scarcely bug-free, I think we'll probably see that happen to a reasonable extent.

Yeah, I remember an older version where I was chased to a fort by a band of goblins attacking me.  I made it inside the fort full of humans, slept, and when I woke up there were goblins all over the place inside the keep.  Thinking back, this was almost certainly the same bug.  Presumably the devlog entry we are referencing about the alligator indicates that this behaviour is now fixed.