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[thijser]

I think that the amout of metal and variation could be simmulair to say how warm a given embark is. This means put it in the worldgen. This is not something that's going to effect a lot of gameplay systems (name one place where it's going to matter if there is a lot of metal in the whole world or whatever the player just flooded the markt). For using an INIT option well the system has already been made and we could keep it until it seizes to work (an alternative might be to give us a option to embark on one square dig down to get a sample abandon and if we like what we saw reembark on a larger area).

[Cespinarve]

We need to be able to specifically set out to find Lapis Lazuli (for making Ultramarine pigment, a pigment so rare and valuable only royalty could afford it), or cobaltite, or sand or kaolinite, or some of the other valuable rare items on the planet.

Amusingly, Minecraft of all things DID just introduce LApis LAzuli for blue dye, and it is an absolutely nigh-impossible thing to find. I only ever found in once in the last few weeks of digging.

HURRAH for a new release, although from the sounds of things, I'm only going to glance at this one until the first bug release, and amybe an adjustment on metal distribution. Thank you Tarn!

[G-Flex]

(name one place where it's going to matter if there is a lot of metal in the whole world or whatever the player just flooded the markt)

Literally anything having to do with trade. Enjoy your worthless gold and less complex world trade economy?


The problem here, as I've probably stated, is that we're in a kind of strange limbo state between two stable phases. Earlier, trade didn't matter a hell of a lot, so we had all kinds of things available to us locally. In the near future, the goal is that you have more specialized things locally and sites trade in a robust manner so that people still have what they need. Right now, we're in between, in a state where we don't have a lot of interesting trade yet, but also don't have a lot of local resources either.

[agatharchides]

Honestly, I don't think things like Alpha have any real meaning in the context of DF. It will just keep going until Toady dies or moves on with his life.  This game supports him and it wouldn't be in anything like its current state if it were something he did only in his spare time. I'm not saying he has an obligation to do this any particular way, but this isn't really an alpha in the tradition sense, normal software development models basically just don't apply.

 But the way I see the current changes is that they are indeed something of placeholder. I think the new minerals layout has the potential to be pretty good, but it needs better trade to support it and more information so you don't have to explore 20 sites painstakingly to find something decent. If you specialize in one or two minerals and trade for others, I'd say that can be fun and realistic. If you have to gen 5 worlds and embark 20 times to find a place where you aren't doomed to the Stone Age because neither your map nor civ have iron or copper, that's not so much fun.

[G-Flex]

I think the new minerals layout has the potential to be pretty good, but it needs better trade to support it and more information so you don't have to explore 20 sites painstakingly to find something decent. If you specialize in one or two minerals and trade for others, I'd say that can be fun and realistic. If you have to gen 5 worlds and embark 20 times to find a place where you aren't doomed to the Stone Age because neither your map nor civ have iron or copper, that's not so much fun.

Damn straight, although I can't stress enough that in addition to this, the game's civs themselves should place their sites according to resource strategy; dwarves should be smarter than to go 200 years of expansion and living without bothering to find places with copper and iron available.

[NW_Kohaku]

I modded in furniture bees which make furniture out of their wax.

That's madness.

A few people are taking up presumptuous assumptions about other people. A lot more assumptions are going on about what Toady's view is.

I'm fairly new to DF, and I keep getting surprised by how many people are complaining about changes and bugs between releases when the game is at such an early stage of development and has no staff except for one guy.

Once a game is declared finished it is open season, but . . . we're not even beta-testers for this game yet yet. We are practically playing his design notes. With any other dev we wouldn't even have the right to play the game at this stage.

This release made me think.. will nobles suddenly start mandating the construction of eggshell thrones?

I'd gladly build them some eggshell rooms over steel menacing spikes.

I'll point out my dwarves are happily enjoying their silty clay (no, not fired clay or stone or earthware, just the dirt) chairs and tables and such.  It's a little bit silly that actual dirt is not excluded from masonry.

Anyway, I've said it before and I'll say it plenty more in the future, this isn't an "early alpha", this is a "playable work in progress".  Even if it's by donations, this is a game with a community and a business model where people have been playing the game for years.  Using terms like "it's an alpha," to therefore mean "none of the bugs or problems are worth mentioning" is just semantic trickery.  The "alpha" of DF is nothing like the alpha of a game that actually expects to be released in under 10 years, and typically doesn't throw its game out into the public eye or raise money until it's at least nearly complete.  Pretending that the same reasoning that works on alphas of other games works on DF is not really being honest about what DF really is.

DF needs playtesters, since obviously Toady isn't going to playtest everything all by himself as fast as we are, but we also need to recognize we're playtesters to a degree, and that means that we both are going to be working on a buggy product subject to change and that those bugs are real bugs that need to be brought to Toady's attention, and it's not an insult to Toady to point out that, yes, there are problems with the game he's built so far.

Complaining about the way that the mineral veins works as if it's being permanently thrust upon us is going too far, but when something is going outside of the bounds of where you want to see the game going, it's certainly worth speaking up alongside others who feel the same to let Toady know that maybe he over-corrected in his steering, and needs to pull it back a little.

As Psieye said, I think what's happening is that Toady isn't trying to set up a single big release where everything is more-or-less working in one big push anymore, he's just throwing out the first thing that has his new systems in place that at least mostly works, and is seeing what things broke, and it's our job as the playtesters to find the broken parts.

That said, it would be nice to have some "stable releases" every now and again like 40d, and "experimental releases" if he starts going down this path, with an ability for players to choose which of these they want to play.


Damnit, so many ninjas they black out the sky!

[agatharchides]

Damnit, so many ninjas they black out the sky!

You'll have to learn to be more concise to be first on the spot. 

[thijser]

(name one place where it's going to matter if there is a lot of metal in the whole world or whatever the player just flooded the markt)

Literally anything having to do with trade. Enjoy your worthless gold and less complex world trade economy?


The problem here, as I've probably stated, is that we're in a kind of strange limbo state between two stable phases. Earlier, trade didn't matter a hell of a lot, so we had all kinds of things available to us locally. In the near future, the goal is that you have more specialized things locally and sites trade in a robust manner so that people still have what they need. Right now, we're in between, in a state where we don't have a lot of interesting trade yet, but also don't have a lot of local resources either.

Yes but that's still not in any way diffrend from having the player flood the market with a much to large fortress. This is not a case where the option is going to have a lot of influence on game options. Value calculations can remain the same, yes metals will be worth a lot less if you do this but it still allows the player some level of control (aswell as the option to embark on a very small region and still have some sort of economy). Now I understand that for example saying that combat is optional might end up screwing a lot of systems alright it already is. This is simmulair to say putting the tempreture really high or low it will simply have effect the world but the same systems as always will still apply (so name one feature that will (or would) stop working if we make this optional).

[Cespinarve]

Bees!  Ahhhhh!  I'm covered in bees!

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_otnpTYg-M04/SO9qKYRdmcI/AAAAAAAAAOM/Em72916uV94/s320/beeweapon.jpg

[Korva]

Hmm. Looks like I'll postpone upgrading, too. For me, the variety in available resources and the information about a region's topmost layers is, frankly, not something I want to do without.

In my opinion, choice is a good thing. There are people who'll jump right into a new embark without definite plans, making do and building on whatever they find. There are players who plan out every single dug and channelled square of their future fortress before the first unpause. There are players who like to build above-ground forts. There are players who seal themselves away from the world. There are players who like making golden pyramids and great marble walls. And there are players who like to try ALL these things, depending on what mood strikes them. To say, now, that something that has been possible for so long is "doing it wrong", that the game isn't "meant to be played that way", that people who liked the old way should just go away, does not sit well with me at all. Surely the game and the community have room for ALL these preferences and playstyles? It's not as if player A's love for OCD-ly planned out megaprojects cripples player B's "no digging, no metal, no trade" challenge game or player C's hermit challenge.

So I too sincerely hope that more detailed embark info and greater metal variety/density will be made optional again. "Realism" is nice, but it is secondary at best to fun IMO, and no one can tell me that dwarves, the magma-blooded master-diggers, can't "realistically" send out prospectors to give us that old degree of embark information so that they don't waste untold resources and lives trying to build a fort on nothing but a cinnabar vein 40 z-levels down.

[agatharchides]

I don't really think the new version cripples megaprojects, it just makes it a lot harder to make them out of, say, pure gold. But that's honestly probably as it should be. I never thought pulling gold nuggets out of the ground like geodes was very realistic and it will make the 30z level pyramid have a gold cover over limestone, not take away the ability to build them. Though as I have said, I do think better trade and prospecting are needed to avoid extremes of metal starvation like a whole dwarven civ stuck in the stone age and frustation with embarking 20 times to find the embark you want.

[freeze]

We don't have the tools in-game to do the extensive prep apparently now involved in locating a suitable megaproject site. Abstracting this sort of boring, repetitive work, that obviously not everyone enjoys and seemingly few will bother with (and I grant you the argument that the dwarves are not in fact creatures of the earth with innate understanding beyond our own) is exactly the sort of thing the game should do for us.

Why do I have to be the one to write or download a hack or mod my game?

[Torham]

Wild ducks are flying in into my hen enclosure and laying eggs in my hen houses. This is usually followed by their demise, since dwarves attack the poor duck as an intruder.

On the side note about this mineral thing it is very clearly work in progress. On the front page Toady written himself "Minerals have been redistributed on the world map, though this might not be satisfying as I was expecting to get a bit farther with dwarf mode trade. Adjustments might have to be made there until trade is updated. We'll see."

And on the dev. page: "Release 2 :Villager/farmer schedules/activities; Work with 3D mineral veins and mine maps"

[G-Flex]

Yes. I'm kind of annoyed that people look at the mineral distribution we have now, and instead of realizing it as a work in progress that needs adjustment and depends on other features to work properly, just assume that it's bad, that they don't like it, and that it shouldn't be imposed on them. Yeah, it sucks right now, and that's why we need to consider what's wrong with the current implementation and how to improve it.

[Vorthon]

Yes. I'm kind of annoyed that people look at the mineral distribution we have now, and instead of realizing it as a work in progress that needs adjustment and depends on other features to work properly, just assume that it's bad, that they don't like it, and that it shouldn't be imposed on them. Yeah, it sucks right now, and that's why we need to consider what's wrong with the current implementation and how to improve it.

Like my stepfather says: Suck it up, buttercup. Even though I'm a guy...