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[Untelligent]

Thank you once again Toady, I fought that insightful.

I also laughed quite a bit when you answered my question on Benevolence. It was hillarious when you really think about it.

"Yeah, the dwarves pretty much destroy everything around their fortress, but they're not that bad you know, they like to sing songs and stuff... Also, if your house was buried in lava, we'll eventually have fairies fixing you semi-molten shoes. Stay tuned ! We still don't have any short term plan for the Psychiatrist Pixies though, so I guess it's okay to cry yourself to sleep evey night in the meantime, he he he"

Oh lordy, that's a perfect impersonation of him. Well, during the Talks, anyway. He seems to have a different style of talking than typing.

[O11O1]

Thank you once again Toady, I fought that insightful.

I also laughed quite a bit when you answered my question on Benevolence. It was hillarious when you really think about it.

"Yeah, the dwarves pretty much destroy everything around their fortress, but they're not that bad you know, they like to sing songs and stuff... Also, if your house was buried in lava, we'll eventually have fairies fixing you semi-molten shoes. Stay tuned ! We still don't have any short term plan for the Psychiatrist Pixies though, so I guess it's okay to cry yourself to sleep evey night in the meantime, he he he"

Psychiatrist Pixies actually like a demonstrably useful feature of a good biome.

Though we may or may not need to wait until we have actual Psychiatrist Dorfs. And the requisit masterwork straightjackets.

[Monkeyfacedprickleback]

Thank you once again Toady, I fought that insightful.

I also laughed quite a bit when you answered my question on Benevolence. It was hillarious when you really think about it.

"Yeah, the dwarves pretty much destroy everything around their fortress, but they're not that bad you know, they like to sing songs and stuff... Also, if your house was buried in lava, we'll eventually have fairies fixing you semi-molten shoes. Stay tuned ! We still don't have any short term plan for the Psychiatrist Pixies though, so I guess it's okay to cry yourself to sleep evey night in the meantime, he he he"

Psychiatrist Pixies actually like a demonstrably useful feature of a good biome.

Though we may or may not need to wait until we have actual Psychiatrist Dorfs. And the requisit masterwork straightjackets.

I reckon a masterwork straightjacket would be sweet.

" I killed my entire family in a a tantrum then a necromancer raised them and I was forced to kill my entire family Again. Hey non nonny, nonny, hey nonny Nonny heeeey...  This Masterwork giantcavespider straight jacket studded with exceptionaly work gold and encrusted with Sapphires of my favorite god with lessens my grief. I think i'm better now, bye nurse ratched."

[Eric Blank]

Thank you once again Toady, I fought that insightful.

I also laughed quite a bit when you answered my question on Benevolence. It was hillarious when you really think about it.

"Yeah, the dwarves pretty much destroy everything around their fortress, but they're not that bad you know, they like to sing songs and stuff... Also, if your house was buried in lava, we'll eventually have fairies fixing you semi-molten shoes. Stay tuned ! We still don't have any short term plan for the Psychiatrist Pixies though, so I guess it's okay to cry yourself to sleep evey night in the meantime, he he he"

Psychiatrist Pixies actually like a demonstrably useful feature of a good biome.

Though we may or may not need to wait until we have actual Psychiatrist Dorfs. And the requisit masterwork straightjackets.

heheheh... Yes, psychiatrist pixies to help console and pacify dwarves, increasing the time it takes an unhappy dwarf to go insane. And giving a happy thought to boot. And then a huge sad thought when the cats eat one in front of a dwarf, at which point the overseer decides that the cats need to be put down, leading to all the cat owners getting pissed off, and a lack of pixies to pacify them.

Just a normal tantrum spiral with a couple extra steps.

I rather like the idea though. I had hoped Gorlaks could act similarly, actually. Making good conversation with dwarves on break, and even becoming friends (requiring currently-impossible inter-species relationships, besides being pets.)
Even other dwarves, especially friends and family, actively consoling one-another when they're feeling unhappy.

Actually, Toady; do you currently have any plans for making inter-species relationships possible, and letting other tame, sentient creatures assist dwarves? Not specifically as slaves, since dwarves consider slavery unthinkable, but through those (good) inter-species relationships, or as pets, or even for personal love for/interest in a certain field of work. I suppose it would be most helpful to the player to permit us to assign labors, but perhaps creatures that don't have a sense of desire for the labors set or duty to their home and loved ones, or have been having a bad day, would be far less likely to actually go do it. Currently, only fishing and hunting function for tame sentient beings.

For example, pet and master between sentient beings is essentially a loosely implied responsibility to one another, but actual assistance demanding their being in good relations. And assistance from non-pet creatures demanding a personality that favors being helpful, or some AI-tracked view of working out of necessity in a stressful situation (carrying wounded which they have no relation to, if they're a similar or greater size to dwarves). Perhaps pets or friends could help carry goods necessary for a reaction/construction, or hauling, cleaning, and other tasks like healthcare.
Combat too, but preferably with a mechanic that implies pets unfit for combat will remain behind when their master becomes active in the military, especially since there's currently no way to arm or armor tamed animals and get them to train, let alone produce goods that are appropriately sized for them.

Somehow, dwarves seem like they are inherently racist, and/or dislike foreigners, but would reward hard work and loyalty with full citizenship. It sort of goes hand-in-hand with permitting any civilized foreigners to become citizens in the fortress.

[Rondol]

On zombies, necromancers and the undead... (Forgive any repeated questions, I don't keep close tabs on this thread unfortunately.)

Do/will zombies learn, gain skills, etc?
Can a necromancer raise zombies of varying power levels (depending on, say, the necromancer's experience and time to prepare, freshness of corpse, etc)?
Related to the last two questions: Could a necromancer raise a corpse, and then make that corpse his apprentice?
Also related, can necromancers use their apprentices to raise themselves in such a way that they retain their powers (or gain new ones)?
And connecting to that: Could a necromancer's ghost raise the dead?
Are there any limits on a necromancer's necromantic powers? For example, is the necromancer's apprentice just as good at raising the dead as his master, and is able to raise just as many just as quickly?
Can non-humanoid corpses be raised? If so, can a zombified human ride a zombified horse? (Zombie cavalry!)

That was about three times as many questions as I meant to ask!

[Knight Otu]

Thanks, Toady!

Do/will zombies learn, gain skills, etc?

Lacking souls, zombies won't learn (though in the future, it might depend on the generated interaction more). They presumably can get some sorts of natural skill that won't improve.

Can a necromancer raise zombies of varying power levels (depending on, say, the necromancer's experience and time to prepare, freshness of corpse, etc)?
Are there any limits on a necromancer's necromantic powers? For example, is the necromancer's apprentice just as good at raising the dead as his master, and is able to raise just as many just as quickly?

Only in the sense that corpse completeness and corpse size/origin affect things. There is no notion of experience or skill for necromancers yet, so two people learning the same necromancy secret have the same abilities from the secret.

Related to the last two questions: Could a necromancer raise a corpse, and then make that corpse his apprentice?
Also related, can necromancers use their apprentices to raise themselves in such a way that they retain their powers (or gain new ones)?

Zombies lose their souls, so neither should work.

And connecting to that: Could a necromancer's ghost raise the dead?

Since the ghost keeps/is/might be/... the soul, that should work.

Can non-humanoid corpses be raised? If so, can a zombified human ride a zombified horse? (Zombie cavalry!)

Nonhumanoid creatures can be zombified indeed. There were mentions of zombie dogs, zombie ducks, zombie elephants, and zombie dragon heads. There has been no mention of riding zombies, so we don't know yet.

Spoiler: some applicable quotes (click to show/hide)

Is there any plan to have undead scale with the power of the necromancer?

Eventually it'll be a full magic system with a whole lot of scaling sort of things and tweaks and specific personalized alterations to effects and various coolness, but for now it is utterly dull.

Suppose I have a necromancer companion. If I die, could he reanimate me? Would I still have control?

Also, can creatures be truly resurrected rather than zombified (retaining original soul and/or with a non-decaying body), or resurrected but with an interaction applied? (and if so, do they retain their previous entity allegiance, or change to that of their resurrector?)

A reanimated body doesn't have the same historical information (or a soul/skills).  A resurrection (which exists, for use by mummy disturbance currently) does bring the soul back. ...

Since zombies need a head or grasping body parts to be reanimated, what happens to a resurrected zombie that gets its head and hands chopped of in battle? Does it fall "dead" (and if so, could that be why the zombies are being defeated so easily?), or does it continue "living" without the head and grasp parts?

Yeah, it collapses, but it's generally the animation hitpoint thing that's causing the trouble (coupled with the move/attack speed issue and no compensation for zero skills).

Can reanimated dragons breathe fire, and reanimated imps throw fireballs?
Do material properties on skin carry over properly, so an animated imp skin is magma/fire immune?
If material properties do carry over, would it be reasonable to assume that if a creature has metal skin, then the skin that's animated will also be the same metal with all those same properties?
...

I haven't tried, but I imagine the attacks work.  The material properties carry over, because it all points to the same place.  That holds for the separated skin as well.

[CaptainArchmage]

Thanks for the answers!

Several of the questions were answered by Footkerchief already, and as usual those won't be below unless I have something to add.

Will books be found in bookcases, on tables, or just lying around on the floors of towers?

If we have a fort which contains one of these secret slabs or books, say by having an adventurer drop it in a location of our choice and then embarking over it, will it be treated as an artifact?

I passed on bookshelves and put the books on tables, as a time thing.  The slab has the status of a mood artifact, and a book is the same extended class of item as a favorite weapon.

According to the latest devblog, the layout of towers were generated on arriving in an area, rather than during worldgen. Is this true of all worldgen locations?

It keeps track of the information it needs to think about in attack AI/conversation/etc.  It would take too long to generate every map from the start, and it would take more save space, especially now with the largest towns occupying up to a 17x17 embark area (which isn't all loaded at once).  If it becomes important to remember one thing or another, it'll be moved into the world gen/map gen information (information about where city wall openings are, for example, which are currently generated later on but will want to be pre-known in time).  The main downside of the way I'm doing it is save compatibility, since most tweaks to the map code will cause old saves to create maps differently even if you've been there before.

Two things.

Having a new map on load prevents the "I'm reloading until I can get past this specific trap layout" problem because that happens a lot in adventuring games. Asking players rather than Toady, what do you think of this?

Have you actually used a book in adventure mode combat?

[Dutchling]

If we'd somehow acquire a house in a a town (adventure mode), will it be at a different place every time you visit the town? Or will some towns remain the same every time?

[buhb11]

I love your work Boss and i hope you will keep the working on unitil year 2044 or more

[YetAnotherStupidDorf]

If we'd somehow acquire a house in a a town (adventure mode), will it be at a different place every time you visit the town?

Maybe you should just forget about save compatibility? Frankly speaking, it is not important at all. No one force you to use newest available version of DF. You do not lose old game or old saves.

[Mel_Vixen]

If we'd somehow acquire a house in a a town (adventure mode), will it be at a different place every time you visit the town? Or will some towns remain the same every time?

Iirc toady said somewhere that a house would obtain the "adventurer site" status so it would be static. Althought Footkerchief could have the right quote.

[scriver]

If we'd somehow acquire a house in a a town (adventure mode), will it be at a different place every time you visit the town?

Maybe you should just forget about save compatibility? Frankly speaking, it is not important at all. No one force you to use newest available version of DF. You do not lose old game or old saves.

...I find your thoughtpaths hard to follow.

[Buttery_Mess]

If the dead are going to become a strategic weakness in the fort against necromancers, a magma-based crematorium might be a good idea. Normally I'm happy for my fortress to contain a stinking vault of rotting flesh. If we had a proper crematorium building, though, that could convert bodies into ash... that would make me pretty cheerful. Obviously dwarf ash would need to be stored in an urn, whereas non-dwarf ash could be converted into lye for soap. Or you could build smelters, bridges, walls out of it or whatever.

Dwarf Fortress is a strange game.

I wonder if Toady could be persuaded to improve the slab engraving menu to include the race of the body and whether or not it has already been slabbed? Seems like an appropriate time to slide something like that in. Come to think of it, if animated body parts are treated as critters in their own right, the arrival of a necromancer could cause an explosion in the size of the list of dead critters in the unit list. Would the body parts be recognised on the slab menu? How often are dead units checked on the frame cycle? I wonder if having lots of things having died on your map slows the game down.

Honestly I'm expecting the next release to be chock full of delicious bugs to fix.

[Mephansteras]

Are the pages in DF books made of a specific material at the moment? Do you intend to have paper in the game or will it be limited to vellum?

I haven't gotten into the new page materials issue, since I'm not setting up industries at this point.  At the same time, the pages are made of a tracked material different from the binding, and it keeps the craft info and maker for that (as with cloth or dye), even if there aren't technically any makers right now.  The writing on it is independent of that.  Ink/writing material is not tracked yet.

Will we be able to mod in book-making with this kind of tracking in Dwarf Mode? I already have modded reactions that use bindings and pages of different materials, but I'd like to know if I'll be able to get the game to track them.

[Dutchling]

If we'd somehow acquire a house in a a town (adventure mode), will it be at a different place every time you visit the town?

Maybe you should just forget about save compatibility? Frankly speaking, it is not important at all. No one force you to use newest available version of DF. You do not lose old game or old saves.

Did you quote the wrong person or am I just completely missing the point here?