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[The Merchant Of Menace]

Will their be an ability to replace stone and soil in future? ie: fill square with stone to form a rought stone wall, or fill a square with gatherd soil - or night soil -farmers workshop- to make arable land? or fill with sand for the same effect?

Just because with this ability ripping down buildings for arable land becomes an option. it also helps players in dwarf mode to get their farms going in a realistic way.

FTFY

And I for one certainly hope so

[NW_Kohaku]

I am imagining damming every river in the world so that only dwarves have water and live. There can be only dwarves!

If you dam a river, where does all the water go?

What water?  Water only spawns up to the water level of the water-spawning tiles, silly!  As long as you dam the river, no new water will be created.

If Dwarf Fortress taught me anything about the hydrosphere, it's that water is spawned infinitely from water-producing tiles.

That's why my well water, which comes from an aquifer, will never run dry, no matter how much water I take out to make my own man-made lake.  Now if you'll excuse me, my house seems to be sinking into the ground for some odd reason.
[/NowYou'reThinkingWithDwarfs]

[Gaspa Craftdreams]

Now, I'm not sure if any of this has been asked before, but

In the next version, will all the non-human civilizations have actual, thriving sites based on the model for human cities and fortresses, in lieu of actual city designs unique to each race?

Also, will the next version have better garbage handling?  Currently, in fortress mode, all units that are deceased or traded away in cages remain in memory until you quit the game.  Can the next version simply cull deceased and traded units every season and just generate a condensed list of important dead figures without taking up unit slots?

And on a related note, how will the next version handle undead units in memory?

[Footkerchief]

Also, will the next version have better garbage handling?  Currently, in fortress mode, all units that are deceased or traded away in cages remain in memory until you quit the game.  Can the next version simply cull deceased and traded units every season and just generate a condensed list of important dead figures without taking up unit slots?

As with every other unmentioned feature, Toady would probably have mentioned this if we was working on it.  Suggestions go here.

And on a related note, how will the next version handle undead units in memory?

You'll probably have to elaborate on this.  Do you mean flags that mem hackers can use, or performance concerns or what?

[Gaspa Craftdreams]

You'll probably have to elaborate on this.  Do you mean flags that mem hackers can use, or performance concerns or what?

Mostly performance issues, particularly when creating undead from existing dead figures in history.

[Footkerchief]

Mostly performance issues, particularly when creating undead from existing dead figures in history.

It sounds like, for now, undead will be transformations of existing figures, not new figures per se:

Will the undead be given life by a necromancer of sorts, or a god, or the spirits of dead entities, or just.. something else?  (I'm thinking of Threetoe's story, Warriors of the Dead, where the soldiers who come back to the "real world" have returned from a kind of hell, could the undead be populated from entities who have actually already died in worldgen history?)

There will be some pseudo-justifications for the initial undead stuff, and a lot of them will be previously living world gen people -- the historical ones are tracked, and all the entity pop ones are now too, by cause of death and location.  We've been exploring and doing some code on a large variety of afterlife stuff for some months now, but there's no concrete timeline on that, so likely they'll just return from "the dead" if they are being brought back as themselves (rather than just an animated corpse).

[Neonivek]

Yeah it can be tough not suggesting things in the the development page.

I mean even I have thought of ways to handle zombie uprisings in such a way that they don't take over the world while at the same time not fudging things in their favor (Dang this ever thinking brain of mine that won't shut up)

But I hold off... Though I have semi-intentionally laced questions with suggestions.

Toady will monsters (Night creatures, Megabeasts, semimegabeasts, named creatures) still get along perfectly happy with eachother for quite some time? I am only wondering because with sewers I was sort of wondering if one type of night creatures could somehow claim dominance over the sewers and beat out the others, or suppress them.

[metime00]

Now, I'm not sure if any of this has been asked before, but

In the next version, will all the non-human civilizations have actual, thriving sites based on the model for human cities and fortresses, in lieu of actual city designs unique to each race?

Non human races get sites in the army arc, probably at least a year from now. Just give non humans the same site tags in the raws until then and they'll work on the exact same mechanics.

[Vorthon]

Now, I'm not sure if any of this has been asked before, but

In the next version, will all the non-human civilizations have actual, thriving sites based on the model for human cities and fortresses, in lieu of actual city designs unique to each race?

Non human races get sites in the army arc, probably at least a year from now. Just give non humans the same site tags in the raws until then and they'll work on the exact same mechanics.

I wonder how the cities in the upcoming release would interact with mountain biomes (Seeing how weird the results are in the current version...)

[NW_Kohaku]

Non human races get sites in the army arc, probably at least a year from now. Just give non humans the same site tags in the raws until then and they'll work on the exact same mechanics.

Actually, this raises a good question...

Also, will there be variations of city layouts beetween different human civilizations? Like, if a civ makes more "organic" looking cities another may make them more rigid (larger roads, no curves, etc.)

Eventually.  First I need to get anything working, and then variety can start to arise, both in the overall layout and in the individual buildings.  The number and regularity of intersections, road width, building size etc. is all pretty easy to control now.

Will any of the aspects of procedural city construction be raw-editable in the foreseeable/near future?  If so, which ones? 

I'm most wondering about whether cities in the raws will be built like they have been built, with there being a token for "dwarf-type" cities and "human-type" cities, or if there will be a possibility to mix-and-match elements to create more subtle variations.  (Sort of like caverns, with their ability to change tunnel width and chamber size probabilities.)

Basically, will dwarven cities be basically like human cities, but with a raw tag that says "but put this all underground, and have more willingness to have z-levels stacked together"?  Or is it going to be an entirely different kind of procedural-city-creation code, so that there can't be an in-between state?

The simple idea that we could one day have procedurally determined architectural styles arising from cultural differences that spring up out of procedural worldgen acclimations to different climates or cultures or religions or the like just tickles my brain in ways that make me drool...

Putting these things into the raws could also let modders do a world of good with all these total conversion-type mods that are running around.

[HollowClown]

As I understand the new curse system that's being introduced, zombies/skeletons will be raised by a curse being placed on the remains that are left lying around in fortress/adventurer mode.  Presumably this means that if you decapitate an elf, and leave the body to rot, you may later be attacked by a headless elf zombie.  This is cool.

But does the whole cursing thing apply to severed body parts as well?  With our hypothetically decapitated elf, is there a chance of the the severed head also rising as a zombie?  For that matter, if you chop the arm off the elf after it's become a zombie, will you have a severed arm that is a zombie?  Or will you just get the severed arm of a zombie?

[Ghills]

I doubt there's going to be a 100% safe burial method for your dwarves, but being respectful will almost always be the better choice (although being respectful and also placing the coffin in a sheer pit might be the best choice in certain areas).

I think this could be a really bad idea. It's going to result in magma-frying the dead asap to prevent their zombification, and it takes control away from the player in a similar way to the recent (and annoying) embark screen changes. If it were handled like tantruming - there is a list of things you have to take care of, that will prevent undead from rising in your fort, and if you forget/don't take care of them you run the risk of undead - that would be one thing.  But getting cursed by the RNG?   

It's also fairly mythologically-inaccurate for cultures with corporeal undead.  Even for non-corporeal undead, actually - ghosts have typically had some reason for their existence (although maybe not one that the living would think of).   And there should be some cultural impact of needing to include re-burial in one's funeral plans.

Can we have some more details on how the undead will be animated? I'm especially interested in the cultural impact of having to plan for Granny Urist's potential reburial, possibly at the wrong end of her own axe.

[Neonivek]

I don't know... even when people did believe in the undead they didn't go through such lengths to destroy bodies.

Especially since depending on the culture a proper burial actually IS the best deterrant for the undead. Plus not all undead are "bad".

Several use ghosts quite strongly as a good thing (African Voodoo sort of, as well as Chinese Mythology if you ignore ancestors being infamously petty).

I mean I can understand maybe posting soldiers at gravesites to stop possible undead uprising... but outright defiling of the dead seems a bit much. Even during deadly plagues did sometimes bodies go unburned and that was a lot more dangerous then zombies and skeletons (who are actually mildly harmless without HUGE masses or magical powers)

"Even for non-corporeal undead, actually - ghosts have typically had some reason for their existence"

Naw sometimes they were just there. African Voodoo didn't have long lists of WHY someone was a ghost/spirit/god after they died. They just were because that is how things work.

Though I do notice by my own limited observation that in mythologies that don't explain ghosts strongly tend to focus more on the "that is just how things are" in a similar way you wouldn't write an extra page about why the sky is blue.

It is Dungeons and Dragons that use a more modern idea of ghosts.

[monk12]

Of course, one of the reasons interring a body beneath 6 feet of earth is a popular way to prevent a zombie apocalypse is because it is REALLY DIFFICULT to dig your way back out of that from a supine position with no room to work with.

In fact, proof of the dead rising was found on the infrequent occasions when a corpse would be exhumed for one reason or another- sometimes, the insides of the casket were scratched up. They attributed it to an abortive attempt at zombism- we attribute it to burying comatose/hypothermic/"not quite dead" victims who then woke to find themselves in their graves. [citation needed]

Not to mention the expedient "wall up the tomb" solution.

[Gaspa Craftdreams]

In a future release, if world gen events get simulated during normal play, will it occur in real-time or after a game has ended?  I would imagine the latter is more viable at this stage of development, but is having real-time world growth a future goal?