Print

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

[Manveru Taurënér]

During the GDS myth talk, there was a piece where a god cursed a group of fey to become demons as a punishment, and I think I remember seeing something about cursing dwarves to become goblins as well. I could see something like this happen where instead of using an existing race, it would derive the new race from the old.

Further to this, the Foul Blendec origin story shows that permanent change/corruption/degeneration of races is something they'd like to explore. http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/story/tt_forest_befouled.html
[/quote]

Had forgotten about that one (ages since I read them all), guess it's just a matter of when then like most things ^^

[Immortal-D]

I've seen a few discussions about the cause of FPS death.  Can you please explain in simple terms exactly where the bottleneck lies, and how easy or difficult it will be to address?

[King Mir]

I've seen a few discussions about the cause of FPS death.  Can you please explain in simple terms exactly where the bottleneck lies, and how easy or difficult it will be to address?

Honestly, my impression of Toady's development process is that the answer to this question is "mostly no". Toady addresses FPS problems as bugs, not as metrics. There have been fixes that address FPS issues, and over times where Toady has chosen to only partially fix issues, so those amount to known bottlenecks. In the same vein there are some subsystems that are known to be slow, such as fluids.

Additionally, there is anecdotal and player evidence that certain things contribute to FPS problems, with mitigating effects. You've probably seen these in discussions, and I believe there's a wiki page on these and what can be done about them.

Finally, we can talk broadly about how DF uses memory. This helps answer questions like what kind of hardware is best for DF and will different methods of parallelism help. Dwarf Fortress uses a lot of memory, for accesses a lot of it every frame. This is anecdotal too, since I'm not aware of anyone actually profiling DF.

A proper answer to this question would require metrics, and those simply don't exist.

[Fieari]

How do you intend to make procedurally generated magic become "thematic"?  Most fantasy works organize their magic around one or more themes, each theme having all magic working similarly.  For example, some split magic into elements, or into schools.  Brandon Sanderson is famous for particularly intricate magic systems... such as all magic requiring the user to ingest and "burn" metal inside their stomachs to cast spells.  All fantasy magics that are more than fairytales have SOME organization to their magic.

I presume spheres would be involved.  Will the RAWs have to expand to have lists of ways the spheres can influence magic?  I know the myths will direct how magic works... but coherence is important!  If a fire spirit is the source of magic in the world, how will the game know to make fire always part of the cost, or the effect, of the magic?

[Criperum]

PTW

[Rockeater]

PTW

[deathpunch578]

Will there be any limit to how powerful magic is?

[Shonai_Dweller]

Will there be any limit to how powerful magic is?

You'll really need to define what you mean by that. What does "powerful" mean to a race who have the innate ability to transform into a bucket?

Generating a world in which children can destroy the earth at will, would be kind of annoying, sure, so in that respect I imagine there are certain 'limits'.

Costs of magic exist in the prototype mythgen, so there's that. I wouldn't expect any kind of "balance" to exist at first though, if that's what you mean (besides the kind that destroys the world before is generated 99% of times, for example).

[deathpunch578]

Will there be any limit to how powerful magic is?

You'll really need to define what you mean by that. What does "powerful" mean to a race who have the innate ability to transform into a bucket?

Generating a world in which children can destroy the earth at will, would be kind of annoying, sure, so in that respect I imagine there are certain 'limits'.

That's kinda what I'm talking about, just overall how powerful can magic be (can people get turned into inanimate objects, can a single spell kill everything on the planet, is it possible to have a spell that makes it permanently winter, etc.) just looking for the limit of how crazy the magic system can be.

[Sooner535]

Heck I would like to see it crazy unbalanced in high magic worlds, and when its the medium settings see certain "caps" so maybe in high magic (or even just above medium magic) there can be spells that destroy a whole world, would be kind of cool to see it happen and then read about it in legends viewer or something lol

[Shonai_Dweller]

Will there be any limit to how powerful magic is?

You'll really need to define what you mean by that. What does "powerful" mean to a race who have the innate ability to transform into a bucket?

Generating a world in which children can destroy the earth at will, would be kind of annoying, sure, so in that respect I imagine there are certain 'limits'.

That's kinda what I'm talking about, just overall how powerful can magic be (can people get turned into inanimate objects, can a single spell kill everything on the planet, is it possible to have a spell that makes it permanently winter, etc.) just looking for the limit of how crazy the magic system can be.

World changing events are in, so, pretty powerful I imagine. Artifacts that effect the fate of races too.

I imagine most of this won't be something the average dorf gets up to, but something which takes a single-minded villain a lifetime to achieve (or a bored adventurer...).

Just speculation though. I guess we'll find out more soon.

[Manveru Taurënér]

That's kinda what I'm talking about, just overall how powerful can magic be (can people get turned into inanimate objects, can a single spell kill everything on the planet, is it possible to have a spell that makes it permanently winter, etc.) just looking for the limit of how crazy the magic system can be.

I'd recommend reading Tales Foretold: The Reign of Cenaster by Threetoe for some specifics. The magics outlined in there range from run of the mill fireballs to swapping souls with animals, locating things by observing your future, a magical sword cyclone, psychics reading minds and controlling people as puppets etc, transmuting materials into others (an acorn into a gold nugget in this case) and on the world changing end of the spectrum as some mentioned there are rituals that can pretty much make you a (or the) god while locking the old gods away in the afterlife, open portals to all manner of hell dimensions letting demons loose on the world along with earthquakes and other fun, and even severing the links to the afterlife dooming everyones souls to linger in the world after death (and possibly eventually reincarnate rather than go to heaven or whatnot).

[Shonai_Dweller]

And if it all gets too silly, gen up a mundane world, play as a human, lead armies against other humans and take over the world the old fashioned way.

[golemgunk]

How do you intend to make procedurally generated magic become "thematic"?  Most fantasy works organize their magic around one or more themes, each theme having all magic working similarly.  For example, some split magic into elements, or into schools.  Brandon Sanderson is famous for particularly intricate magic systems... such as all magic requiring the user to ingest and "burn" metal inside their stomachs to cast spells.  All fantasy magics that are more than fairytales have SOME organization to their magic.

I presume spheres would be involved.  Will the RAWs have to expand to have lists of ways the spheres can influence magic?  I know the myths will direct how magic works... but coherence is important!  If a fire spirit is the source of magic in the world, how will the game know to make fire always part of the cost, or the effect, of the magic?

In a bit of the myth generator that was shown, there were dwarves that could cast spells at the cost of their own blood, and their creation myth said they were created from a force called "the eternal blood" or something. So it looks like themed systems like that will just emerge naturally from the sources of magic in a world.

[Shonai_Dweller]

If a fire spirit is the source of magic in the world, how will the game know to make fire always part of the cost, or the effect, of the magic?

That's pretty much what the myth generator does (at least in the demo versions). If a fire spirit created the elves and gave them innate magical abilities, it'll be mostly fire related magic. It's procedural generation, not "random".

I suggest watching the various mythgen videos.