Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Girlinhat]

I think if there were any random metals it would be 1-2 types.  If you've played Terraria, it would be like if Cobalt and Mythril were random, or pseudo-random.  Any "random" metals would probably still fall into a fairly tight swathe.  Like you might get a special metal that has a sharpness somewhere between copper and bronze - a fairly narrow range.  More than likely, you'll get groups of metals, like 1-2 "common" metals of mediocre or unusable weapon traits and marginal value, like copper and zinc, 2-3 mid-range materials like iron or silver, and 1 good metal like candy.  Toady has done a good job of keeping random things in check where it counts.  Your migrants tend to be fair, you don't get a wave of 15 perfectly useless peasants, because that'd be irritating, and caravans bring random goods, but they're smart about it.  Forgotten Beasts are hilarious at times, when you get a winged ass with frozen spittle and purple skin, but that's ok because the description doesn't matter, so it's ok if it's terrible.

Well, you also get FB made of steam, so dunno, maybe FB could use some polishing overall...

[Di]

Well, this was something of a surprise, though we'll likely get this only next year.
With world specific vamps and materials there's actually a reason to stick to one world till it runs out of fun.

[MadocComadrin]

I think if there were any random metals it would be 1-2 types.  If you've played Terraria, it would be like if Cobalt and Mythril were random, or pseudo-random.  Any "random" metals would probably still fall into a fairly tight swathe.  Like you might get a special metal that has a sharpness somewhere between copper and bronze - a fairly narrow range.  More than likely, you'll get groups of metals, like 1-2 "common" metals of mediocre or unusable weapon traits and marginal value, like copper and zinc, 2-3 mid-range materials like iron or silver, and 1 good metal like candy.  Toady has done a good job of keeping random things in check where it counts.  Your migrants tend to be fair, you don't get a wave of 15 perfectly useless peasants, because that'd be irritating, and caravans bring random goods, but they're smart about it.  Forgotten Beasts are hilarious at times, when you get a winged ass with frozen spittle and purple skin, but that's ok because the description doesn't matter, so it's ok if it's terrible.

Well, you also get FB made of steam, so dunno, maybe FB could use some polishing overall...

And we'll probably be able to limit/increase the number during worldgen, maybe even during basic worldgen (or perhaps it will be tied into mineral frequency).

[Anathema]

If Toady implements random materials I think there should be descriptions of materials as well. For example, gold might be something like this: "A shiny yellow metal. It is highly valuable. It is heavy, but it is soft, and can't form sharp edges."

This was my first thought too, logically random metals should necessitate better metal descriptions. Right now iron doesn't really need a description because.. well it's iron, you know what to expect from it. But when we start mining out Randomite and Procedurite and smelting them into bars, we're going to need some kind of indication of what these new metals are like - maybe not numbers as detailed as exist within the raws, but it should at least be obvious to the smith if a new metal's hardness is closer to iron or gold (without needing to make a spear of the stuff and drop a peasant on it, fun though that may be).

[Shintaro Fago]

I, for one, welcome our new random metal overlords and think plants and animals should be random too. Even if they will be vanilla plants and animals with different descriptions and names I would LOVE to explore everything and learn about the world.

[Areyar]

Requiring a master alchemist-smelter for accurate descriptions.
If they are truly random and super rare, generated as they are found.
On the other hand if they are as universal worldwide as adamantinite is now in the DF worlds, then a mere description of all metals and their reactions would be a good addition as an information page.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

An alchemist's log would be interesting:
adding descriptions of metals, alloys and reactions as they are created/invented/discovered, possibly quality of entries dependant upon skill level:

layman: it is a greenish metal,
skilled:  Greenite is hard and very brittle,
Master: smelting reactions in addition to pure metal smelting.
 Azurium : an alloy of greenite with copper, azurium is hard yet flexible.

[Bobble]

Cheese hammers? Bars of jello? This update got at least 20% better...

Which would eliminate the need for stockpiles because ... you know ... there's ALWAYS room for jello. 

[proxn_punkd]

I, for one, welcome our new random metal overlords and think plants and animals should be random too. Even if they will be vanilla plants and animals with different descriptions and names I would LOVE to explore everything and learn about the world.

Sphalerite made a Python script that creates a "plant_random" txt file full of randomly-generated plants, including trees, grasses, and shrubs with various functions (and the odd shrub with no functions at all-- it ain't perfect!).

I generate a random plants file and go through it and pick out all the useless plants and some of the redundant plants and change some of the prefstrings to make more sense or include stealth fandom references or less-stealthy jokes. This has the side-effect of me learning which plants are useful, and hopefully paring down plants_random to less than 100+ plants! Then I go remove plants_standard and gen a world that has only the randomly-generated plants. Sink or swim, little dorfs!

[Wannazzaki]

Who else expects initial release to have bugs where cheese is a minable substance?

[Silophant]

I expect the coming release to have features where cheese is a minable substance.

[Minnakht]

I don't know, I don't think Toady will include [EDIBLE_RAW] or [EDIBLE_COOKED] among tags random metals could get. Especially not also whatever tags make cheese a rotting dairy product.
Shame, though. Would totally remind me of Discworld.
Mmm, treacle mines.

[Wannazzaki]

I don't know, I don't think Toady will include [EDIBLE_RAW] or [EDIBLE_COOKED] among tags random metals could get. Especially not also whatever tags make cheese a rotting dairy product.
Shame, though. Would totally remind me of Discworld.
Mmm, treacle mines.

 He could at least give us sugar cane fields as a biome!

[Minnakht]

"petrified sweet pod" gemstones?

[Wannazzaki]

"petrified sweet pod" gemstones?

Also edible, you suck them.

[Alestom]

I read that as being that occassionally we'd get metals that wouldn't normally appear in that area, probably in smaller quantities than normal.

However, if we're gonna eventually get randomly created metals then my excitement levels have just reached a possibly dangerous threshold 

also, slightly off-topic, whatever the story with metals is, those mists sound very interesting and FUN 

I can just see a dwarf crack open a stone and this black mist burst out and melt his eyes........... YES!