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[freeformschooler]

Book length is quite certainly based on the number of events/facts transcribed therein. There presumably are other variables, of course, so that it isn't a 1 event is 1 page thing (whether on an event basis or based on how purple and flowery the prose is).

Wait, how do you know it's that and not just a random-number-of-pages-per-book placeholder? Did Toady say anything about how the length of books is determined other than they have a length? The latest devlog doesn't lead me to believe so, and I don't remember anything from the FotF.

[Knight Otu]

What makes you think I know anything? All I'm doing is extrapolating from the stuff Toady told us - that the necromancers write about stuff they know, and that a book about a converted spouse gets 30 pages while one about a direct apprentice who also happened to be a queen gets almost ten times that much.

[Cruxador]

On the more amusing side, I went to a tower at night, and all the zombies were sleeping. But they can't sleep or be KO'd in any way, so they were actually just pretending to sleep. They didn't attack me, but I didn't get any attack bonuses either, aside from the one for them being on the ground.

This would be a cool feature to have happen in the towers of more eccentric necromancers.

[Neonivek]

On the more amusing side, I went to a tower at night, and all the zombies were sleeping. But they can't sleep or be KO'd in any way, so they were actually just pretending to sleep. They didn't attack me, but I didn't get any attack bonuses either, aside from the one for them being on the ground.

This would be a cool feature to have happen in the towers of more eccentric necromancers.

Well it isn't uncommon in fiction for Zombies to suddenly stop moving completely until they are a decent distance away from anyone.

[darkflagrance]

I can't help but feel that to some extent, the tying of the creation of monsters, apprentices, and books to previously extant historical figures is decreasing the verisimilitude of world gen. Because of how few world gen figures there are (and can be due to computational costs), it is inevitable that every possible dwarf fortress world gen event will happen to a world gen figure; it will be bizarre reading histories where every world gen figure is a leader or noble or one kind or another who had wrote a book, discovered immortality, and then became a monster.

[zwei]

I can't help but feel that to some extent, the tying of the creation of monsters, apprentices, and books to previously extant historical figures is decreasing the verisimilitude of world gen. Because of how few world gen figures there are (and can be due to computational costs), it is inevitable that every possible dwarf fortress world gen event will happen to a world gen figure; it will be bizarre reading histories where every world gen figure is a leader or noble or one kind or another who had wrote a book, discovered immortality, and then became a monster.

Do not forget taming giant eagles!

[Neonivek]

I can't help but feel that to some extent, the tying of the creation of monsters, apprentices, and books to previously extant historical figures is decreasing the verisimilitude

For now Toady is just working on making it happen rather then making things unfold logically. This is starting to have the problem of "Some actions are purely illogical"

Also creating books isn't that unusual. Things were boring back then and as such a lot of people with some intellect would do... something...

They are usually just pen written first copies.

[Miuramir]

I can't help but feel that to some extent, the tying of the creation of monsters, apprentices, and books to previously extant historical figures is decreasing the verisimilitude of world gen. Because of how few world gen figures there are (and can be due to computational costs), it is inevitable that every possible dwarf fortress world gen event will happen to a world gen figure; it will be bizarre reading histories where every world gen figure is a leader or noble or one kind or another who had wrote a book, discovered immortality, and then became a monster.

Given the preponderance of real early texts that are either 1) religious, 2) biographies/family histories of nobility, 3) secret knowledge (alchemy, metallurgy, etc.); it seems reasonable that DF texts follow similar patterns.  We still seem to be missing the "generic holy book" ("In 324 Urist McDevout created a masterpiece 81 page tome 'Ushilzangin' on the worship of Ethbeshonshen, in his aspect as a Giant Sparrow exemplifying the sphere of Seasons") and their follow-on effects ("In 349 Urist McDilettante read the tome 'Ushilzangin' and became a devout worshiper of Ethbeshonshen"); but I would guess something along those lines is likely to go in eventually. 

Looking at the other side of things, world gen can easily have thousands of notable figures; setting the odds so that the right number of them have "unusual" events is a balance question for fairly late in the process.  Hopefully, it will be controlled by init options, so people wanting long histories don't end up with everyone important undead (unless they want it that way), but also allowing for it to be cranked up for testing.  From another standpoint, how many medieval or earlier historical figures do most people know that *didn't* have something unusual happen to them?  Reality tends to prune unimportant historical figures even more harshly than DF. 

[Askot Bokbondeler]

We still seem to be missing the "generic holy book" ("In 324 Urist McDevout created a masterpiece 81 page tome 'Ushilzangin' on the worship of Ethbeshonshen, in his aspect as a Giant Sparrow exemplifying the sphere of Seasons") and their follow-on effects ("In 349 Urist McDilettante read the tome 'Ushilzangin' and became a devout worshiper of Ethbeshonshen")

i loved that, now there's a great suggestion.

[Melissia]

Pardon me if this has been asked before (I searched, but the huge thread is HUGE!):

Is crafting (or perhaps paying others to craft for you, putting those lazy human weaponsmiths/armorsmiths/clothiers to good use!), planned for an official DF Adventurer mode update?

Is there further customization for adventurer mode being made, such as choosing your description at character generation instead of it being randomly generated?

I find DF Fort mode to be pretty damned good, so I'm awaiting that update simply for extra bonus content, but adventurer mode really needs an update in comparison.

[Askot Bokbondeler]

There were some steps made in that direction already, you can craft stone knives and butcher corpses already in adventurer mode, and there is mod support for other crafting reactions as well, search for the mod Wanderer's Friend. Finally, the basic adventure mode skills point to several additions and improvements to the current framework

[Untelligent]

Yeah, that's all planned.

[monk12]

I believe the physical appearance bit was addressed in a recent DF Talk- was it this last one, or the one before? I forget.

[Melissia]

I'm listening to the latest one to check it out.

Also yay for the crafting thing... I want to, eventually, do a game where there's no more civilizations and I'm basically living off of the melted and re-forged items of the victims of night creatures or other beasts, and the leathers, furs, and bones of beasts I've slain.

[scriver]

A search gave this old post. Could swear I read something about it more recently, though. If the DF talk don't give anything, try looking for Toady's recent answer-posts.

also, i dunno it this is answered somewhere: any chance a fully customizable dwarf description is in the works? basically for adventure mode, but maybe for special dwarfs in dwarf mode? it would be nice to model a dwarf after my looks and/or personality, or others that "sponsor" a dwarf in my fortress.

This came up in the old List thread:

Will be possible to edit the adventurer apperance or at least know about his apperance?

You can look at yourself and others.  Changing the appearance would be an interface to write, which isn't the end of the day.  You should certainly be able to customize yourself later on, at least in one version of the start setup (versus historical scenarios or whatever), since it's good to be able to be whatever you want to be.  It'll probably depend on prodding or just me eventually doing it.  Since you pick out where you are from first, it'll probably be constrained by the entity/race settings, with options to break convention or something.  Breaking reality (ie making a blue-skinned human) is more difficult because of how the appearance variables are indexed, and there might even be some issues there with breaking out of entity stylings, though I don't think there are.