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[Putnam]

I'm going to move on to the final town cleaning now.

The release is in sight!

Unless he is handling more then towns.

The drudgery is nearly over, it must be noted, as towns are pretty much "da big one" this update. This update is release one of the Caravan arc, and towns are the only stated goal for it. The reason that we have all these night creatures and interactions and crap is so that we have something to do while in town.

[darkflagrance]

I wonder if Toady has indicated when on the Caravan Arc adding NPC Mountainhomes happens.

[Knight Otu]

I wonder if Toady has indicated when on the Caravan Arc adding NPC Mountainhomes happens.

Current plan for those is the army arc, along with the other site types.

[Gaspa Craftdreams]

I would imagine that using the human city model will suffice for the other entities in the next release as I think that proper mountainhomes would be too time-consuming to focus on at this point.

Still, if we're going to have sewers, ancient mummy tombs, and elaborate vampire hideouts, there's a good chance that dwarven underground cities might not be too far off.

[Areyar]

Placeholder Mountainhomes could be just extra huge sewers with extras and a few trade/fortifications up top.
As long as there is someplace to have dwarves hang out.
to be honest, even a human style village with all the dwarves/elves in the inns would be preferable to the empty spots they are currently.

[Gaspa Craftdreams]

Well, if we really REALLY need to make generated dwarven underground cities different from those of other entities, I guess we could use the Dungeon Crawl method of randomly-generated catacombs, where you have a simple dungeon template for the current level and then you fill it up with randomly selected, predefined vaults and make the generator work around that.

It might not be able to generate rooms that take up multiple Z-levels, but it should work.

Also I think that was how mountainhomes were generated back in 40d, but I don't exactly remember.

[zilpin]

Multi-level rooms have no utility in Dwarven engineering anyways, so your suggested Dungeon Crawl method would be perfect to satisfyingly accomplish the goal with the least code needed.

But this is Toady we're talking about.
No way he'll go with the solution that uses the least code.
 

[Sizik]

Another thing that would need to be handled with underground cities is the fast travel map, which would have to accommodate multiple z-levels.

[Keldane]

For my part, I only hope that this final stretch draws to a close around Friday - I really hope I can play the new version while watching Desert Bus.

Concerning fast travel maps accommodating multiple z-levels, if there are major stairways going between levels, they could be noted on the map, and standing on that particular fast travel tile (assuming the mid-zoom city map) would allow use of the standard 'Go up/Go down' commands as appropriate.

At least, that's what I'm picturing. Secret stairways, or houses that span multiple z-levels, would likely have to be found in regular travel anyway.

... Except, you were probably meaning letting players know when what they want to find is on a level above or below them, weren't you? <_<

[Footkerchief]

For my part, I only hope that this final stretch draws to a close around Friday

2011-09-13:

I still have a page of issues for each of the new night creatures, and six and a half pages for the cities/markets/underground, in addition to the animal stuff.

The night creatures are about done, which puts us at 4 of 11 pages completed.  Current prediction: Feb 27, 2012 March 1, 2012.  Of course, Toady might blow through the city notes and postpone stuff.

[grueburger]

Here's some release date pseudo-science for you all:

(based on the 10.5 pages of issues estimate Toady gave us and the devlog updates)

Code: [Select]

09/13 - 09/21 werewolves 8  days
09/21 - 10/06 necro/zombies 15 days
10/06 - 10/21 mummies 15 days
10/21 - 11/06 vampires 16 days

average 49/4 = 12.25 days

cities pages = 6.5

6.5 * 12.25 = 79.625 days at average rate
6.5 * 8     = 52 days at fastest (werewolf) rate
6.5 * 16    = 104 days at slowest (vampire) rate
Giving us a possible release date somewhere between 6th jan and the 27th feb, with the likeliest date being 2nd feb.

Of course this all assumes that Toady doesn't take any days off or have any kitchen floods again, and that the issues he has to work on for cities are of roughly the same difficulty as the ones he had for night creatures.  Which are not assumptions I'd make bets on.  But it is at least a nice concrete set of dates for us all to fetishise!  (All of which are more optimistic than Footkerchief's date, which worries me.  He isn't often wrong...)

[Cruxador]

(All of which are more optimistic than Footkerchief's date, which worries me.  He isn't often wrong...)

And in general, when in comes to DF releases, the actual date tends to be later than the least optimistic prediction.

[Footkerchief]

Code: [Select]

09/13 - 09/21 werewolves 8  days
09/21 - 10/06 necro/zombies 15 days
10/06 - 10/21 mummies 15 days
10/21 - 11/06 vampires 16 days

average 49/4 = 12.25 days


Not trying to quibble over numbers, but is 49 the correct total?  I get 54 as the total from your numbers, although since vampires were just finished yesterday, I count them as 24 days, bringing the total to 62 and the days-per-page to 15.5.  I also counted sponsorship animals as a half-page for a total of 11 pages.  But yeah, it's all pseudoscience and I suspect Toady will try to get through the city notes faster.

[grueburger]

Not trying to quibble over numbers, but is 49 the correct total?  I get 54 as the total from your numbers, although since vampires were just finished yesterday, I count them as 24 days, bringing the total to 62 and the days-per-page to 15.5.  I also counted sponsorship animals as a half-page for a total of 11 pages.  But yeah, it's all pseudoscience and I suspect Toady will try to get through the city notes faster.

Oof, yeah, you are right about the total AND the end of the vampire list being yesterday. Turns out I can't add OR read (my excuse? Will flu do? That's the excuse I usually use for work)...  The new figures give 23th feb for the average speed deadline and a horrifying 19th april for the slowest speed deadline.

New table:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Code: [Select]

09/13 - 09/21 werewolves 8  days
09/21 - 10/06 necro/zombies 15 days
10/06 - 10/21 mummies 15 days
10/21 - 11/14 vampires 24 days

average 62/4 = 15.5 days

cities pages = 6.5

6.5 * 15.5  = 100.75 days at average rate
6.5 * 8     = 52 days at fastest (werewolf) rate
6.5 * 24    = 156 days at slowest (vampire) rate

Thanks for spotting that, I like my pseudoscience to be accurate (its no fun otherwise).  Including sponsorship animals was a good idea too - the last segment seemed to take 5 or so days but it was interspersed with normal development so its hard to get exact numbers.  A half-page of notes seems like a good approximation for that.

[CharlesPeter]

Not trying to quibble over numbers, but is 49 the correct total?  I get 54 as the total from your numbers, although since vampires were just finished yesterday, I count them as 24 days, bringing the total to 62 and the days-per-page to 15.5.  I also counted sponsorship animals as a half-page for a total of 11 pages.  But yeah, it's all pseudoscience and I suspect Toady will try to get through the city notes faster.

Oof, yeah, you are right about the total AND the end of the vampire list being yesterday. Turns out I can't add OR read (my excuse? Will flu do? That's the excuse I usually use for work)...  The new figures give 23th feb for the average speed deadline and a horrifying 19th april for the slowest speed deadline.

New table:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Code: [Select]

09/13 - 09/21 werewolves 8  days
09/21 - 10/06 necro/zombies 15 days
10/06 - 10/21 mummies 15 days
10/21 - 11/14 vampires 24 days

average 62/4 = 15.5 days

cities pages = 6.5

6.5 * 15.5  = 100.75 days at average rate
6.5 * 8     = 52 days at fastest (werewolf) rate
6.5 * 24    = 156 days at slowest (vampire) rate

Thanks for spotting that, I like my pseudoscience to be accurate (its no fun otherwise).  Including sponsorship animals was a good idea too - the last segment seemed to take 5 or so days but it was interspersed with normal development so its hard to get exact numbers.  A half-page of notes seems like a good approximation for that.

you really think it could take him HALF A YEAR to finish cleaning up the towns? I don't see the justification for that based on coding in Vampires and Werewolves etc. Also, who's to say that each monster was a full "page" of notes? What defines a page? Were the things that were feature creep on the pages? Or were those separate pages? There's really not much to base that on, is there? It seems like there isn't a large font of info to make predictions like this on. Or at least there's not much depth to it other than a few casual mentions by Toady.

I dunno, it seems like a pre-Christmas release to me, if all that's left is the cleaning of towns like Toady seems to have implied.