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[Death Dragon]

Well...how realistic is that though?
The religious buildings are representative of priests, monks and other assorted preachers spreading the good word ("Praise suicide!"). Do librarians do the same thing on a massive scale? Revolutionaries, maybe, who would direct people to libraries, but we don't have them yet (besides diligent adventurers) and probably won't until the society/politics update.

Realistically it would depend on the population's literacy of course.
I don't think the impact of religious buildings on the population is caused just by people like priests and monks. I assume the architecture, pretty pictures in the church/ shrine and whatever else probably also have their part in influencing the people, so I don't think giving libraries the ability to influence would literally mean that librarians run around and force people to read books. The DF world doesn't have any television or youtube. That makes me imagine that people jump on any new book they can get their hands on (as they do in player forts, I suppose).
In real life we have tons of books that had some sort of impact on society. Political texts by Plato or Machiavelli, Euclid's The Elements, the Communist Manifesto, the Bible, Harry Potter, etc. It doesn't sound like an unreasonable idea to me. I don't really think revolutionaries or similar are necessary for books like these to have an impact. Sure, they help spreading them, but they are also kinda created by them, no?

[Untrustedlife]

Sorry for so many questions this time around, but i have alot this month, so heres what happened I killed a vampire who was a king(lawgiver), drank his blood, became a vampire, then assumed a false identity, then became a necromancer, and built a wooden tower with my zombies, as i was building the tower, human soldiers kept intruding on us who my zombies would attack and i would have to kill them, and they kept spitting at me and calling me a murderer for killing their king as my zombies ripped them apart, this was awesome, as it felt like i was a actual dungeon lord dealing with pesky heroes coming to my tower (and they still are, this is my current adventurer save ). I have asked on here before if adventurers would go to your camp and you said no, so why is this happening? Is it just hearth patrols sniffing me out? Or is this an intended feature? And if so will it be properly supported/will it be expanded upon in the future, eg full on sieges of my camp by large groups of soldiers. Instead of just soldiers "trickling in" i notice that most of them are also "recruits"

[Shonai_Dweller]

Well, since it's the end of the month, I may as well give it a shot...
What's the Announcement going to be?
...
Too direct?

How about:
Hint please!

Oh, and,
Are you giving a talk at GDC this year?

[Untrustedlife]

Well, since it's the end of the month, I may as well give it a shot...
What's the Announcement going to be?
...
Too direct?

How about:
Hint please!

Oh, and,
Are you giving a talk at GDC this year?

Well he was preparing "material" for the announcement. So hmmm.

[therahedwig]

With the map rewrite, were you also planning to make it easy for sites to dynamically resize? Like, for example, Dwarves digging down greedily, but also perhaps surface towns expanding.

I thought it might help a lot with situations where the player's fort map is slowing down because 250 cave horses are trying to path through the third cave, and I wasn't sure whether to expect that from the rewrite.

[PatrikLundell]

I believe the map rewrite intends to address the issue of having player sites straddle world tile boundaries, which isn't exactly what was asked. Expanding the size of a site to cater to expansion sounds feasible, but contracting it less so (the ruins should still be there in the abandoned parts). I believe there's been some discussion regarding embarking on a former (player or world gen) site using a differently sized/located embark site, though.

If a world doesn't have any defined bottom (like the magma sea and the region below) it's would probably be technically feasible to just extend the bottom layer (which would be somewhat boring) on demand (I believe there's a DFHack utility to expand the sky upwards in an existing fortress, but the sky doesn't contain any features [except for the shear bug, but I don't know those appear in expanded skies as well]).

[therahedwig]

According to the existing fotf answers, the main purpose of the map rewrite is to go from the current sites, which are 2d regions that in effect load the whole pillar of a given world, to cubic sites, which means that only a few layers or a section of that part of the world is loaded. And somehow this should make things like placing 3d features(veins, rivers, better volcanos), planes, multiple maps loaded at once, intersecting sites, moving maps parts(floating continents) and things like world trees possible/easier(though every site and existing feature in the game needs to be rewritten to fit in the new system).

So yeah, the main thing I'm curious about is whether these cubes could expand. Shrinking would be cool too, but sounds so difficult I hadn't even considered it :p

[Death Dragon]

"What changes does the future hold?  For those of us lucky enough to have one, it is always uncertain."

Well, I sure hope the future holds a bunch more sequels to the Tales Foretold series. 

[Lemunde]

Well, since it's the end of the month, I may as well give it a shot...
What's the Announcement going to be?

Boat Murdered coming to Netflix.

[Toady One]

"Are the militaristic mercenary groups viable candidates in the future for alternative starting fort scenarios, they seem pretty fleshed out compared to other groups in a self sufficient way besides say- a travelling band of minstrels" Auldsmen we still haven't got a lot of coverage of, we've seen traders, prophets, mercenaries but only the hints of the honest workers of the guilds.

A second tangental question towing the line of a suggestion i guess: "Will auldsmen also have favourite items contrary to their fluffily assigned 'jobs' that they specialise in or am i reading too much into it based of merc's?" here's to thinking contracting a guildmember with a penchant for scimitars (T&C's apply) could be put to work equipping your dwarves just by being a hired specialist to equip them with freshly forged arms, save them just being a tad useless apprenticeship workshop and maybe a background industrial presence in W.G but we'll see what comes out in devlogs i guess.

Certainly we've gotten a little out ahead of the status/subgroups/etc. release, and some of the things we've been doing now set the stage for that.  Having a fortress that starts as a mercenary group stronghold would work, as with the religious and mining company etc. possible start -- or mixtures, such as the religious military orders.  We'll eventually be understanding much more about why the initial group of dwarves is doing what they are doing, whether that's seven dwarves with a wagon or something else.

Yeah, I'm open to making guildmembers (or workers in general) more interesting at some point.  People have favorite items generally, and general skills like "weaponsmith", and it would make sense for there to be some more information there.  I haven't done anything with the guilds and their products the same way I have with merc items; the guilds are tied in to the w.g. economy already, so additions there will be more involved when we do get around to them.  Similarly, if merc groups actually had to source their specialty items rather than just getting them, there would be complications.  Hopefully we can get to all of it sometime.

Now question,will the mode of Legends change, now without utilities difficult

Why dwarves are only defending, I thought that after the last release they will attack

I heard that you want to change the legends mode, is it possible to do so that in the games themselves they see how some of the known information is wobbling and when exporting there was all the information in XML dump

How do you think when the game is ready in your opinion

People have already started to think when magic and myths will come out in a special topic, you have a date when you want to get an update?

What is your development plan now? Release the villainous update, myths and magic in parts and then what will you do?

Did you ever think of throwing a game?

How long now is the generation of the world now? And in general, the performance of the dwarf fortress

PatrikLundell: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7924864#msg7924864
Shonai_Dweller: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7924867#msg7924867
Death Dragon: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7924937#msg7924937
Aid (op): http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7925221#msg7925221

I think the first question was handled in the links above.

Is the attack/defense bit about world gen dwarf attacks?  I'm not sure what the current state is.  I vaguely recall changing something, but perhaps it's not fixed.

I didn't understand the wobbling part.

Ready, like 1.0?  Or any given release?  1.0 is currently based on a point system from some old notes.  As we've seen in the upcoming version and others, those don't encompass everything we're going to do, but that's still how I update the numbers.  In that way, 1.0 is not an incredibly important distinction; if we ever make it there, we can celebrate, then just keep working.  For each individual release, we just have a list of the main points we want to hit upon, and try to stick with it.

I don't have a date set for the magic release.  It's going to be one of the longest waits for a release due to the core changes that must be made to get even the basic features to work.

Yeah, that's right -- once the dust settles with the villains etc. etc., there will be one or more myth/magic releases, and then after that the current plan is to do the embark situation/property/status/laws/customs/etc. framework release(s).  After that, we don't have an ordered plan.

I didn't understand the throwing part.

I'm not sure what you mean by how long or which performance parameters you are concerned with.  Certainly villains demand some resources, but it's not terrible; I've been running out histories into the hundreds of years for these dev logs without any new problems (not that it was super-fast to do that in a medium world previously.)

Can mercenary companies downgrade some of their equipment to stay afloat for a while, or is that not something they consider?

Does the equipment belong to the company, or is it awarded to individuals?

therahedwig: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7925059#msg7925059

Yeah, the equipment is given to individuals for now, which is very kind.  There's also the company-wide level, so if a non-historical mercenary is ever elevated to historical status, they'll have equipment (becoming their own individual equipment) in line with company standards.  The non-historical squads used in battles also benefit from company equipment levels.

I'd considered doing downgrades to pay off debts, but I'm just letting it float for now.  Being broke generally happens before they get into the equipment business at this point, but it'll probably be a good thing to update.

I only just now realized, why does the adventurer carpentry menu allow you to craft splints, bins, cabinets, and other items you can't use or build with?

If it was just a straight conversion of the carpenter's workshop's contents it'd make sense, but you correctly omitted being able to make cages (useless in adventure mode as far as I can determine), along with a lot of furniture items you can't place in the construction menu, but ALSO omitted animal traps (available from a carpenter's workshop in fort mode, and useful in adventure mode for trading vermin) and minecarts (which are hilariously useful in adventure mode).

Shonai_Dweller: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7925270#msg7925270
Random_Dragon (op): http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7925582#msg7925582

Yeah, I don't recall the specifics but this is very likely to just be unfinished features mishmashed with me maybe thinking I was going to be able to add e.g. adv mode medical and didn't in fact get to it (which has happened a few times).  Hopefully it will come to make sense over time.  As Shonai_Dweller mentions, we have another good crack at it slated in the possible near-term dev section, and how that plays out is going to depend on what stuff feels like after the villain release etc. etc. dust settles.

First, is it planned for religiously affiliated mercenary companies to interact with the organized religions that they follow? For example sending guards with prophets/priests/pilgrims of the same religion, or perhaps their members will also undertake pilgrimages themselves? May be jumping ahead in terms of development with this one, been a while since I've read up on the posted future plans.

Second, do the new networking mechanics interact with entity ethics? Namely in regards to the [JUSTIFIED_IF_NO_REPERCUSSIONS] tag? Like say Entity Member A murders Entity Member B in broad daylight, while Entity Member C is the local law enforcement officer who would normally intervene. But in this instance, A has flipped C into their network beforehand, and thus evades the otherwise lawful consequences for their actions. I know this is what happens in the upcoming villain update regardless. But I'm wondering if this might have or be planned to have some special interaction?

We'd like to do more with it, yeah, but it's sparse as usual right now.  The fact that the characters individually are all mostly religiously fervent does cause some effects that feel more holistic with pilgrimages and so forth, but it's not as entity-linked as it should be.

I haven't specifically played with that tag yet...  I think it was original supposed to be about repercussions involving a second civilization, like not making waves, though the tags are so hopelessly vague it has inhibited forward motion a bit there, with additional inertia caused by it all being gutted with the customs/law stuff.

How will the new villain networks, mercenary bands and things interact with adventurer mode?

What I get to remains to be seen.  At the minimum, you'll be able to run a villain network from the top yourself, and you'll be able to direct others to do any of the actions that make it into post-world-generation villainous activity, which isn't specified yet but should be roughly like what we've done in world generation.  You'll be able to investigate the activities of villains.  Whether you can join an organization as somebody lower down depends on a number of factors that I'm not sure I'll be able to do yet -- this mainly hinges around having conversations/items/etc. that actually let you carry out a plot on the local map, which always makes stuff harder.

Have you considered allowing adventurers to put points into http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Appraiser at the start of the game, so that we can see goods prices in adventure mode? Or is there some mechanical blocker there?.

Knight Otu: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7926702#msg7926702

It could also just relate to the general economy mess and how effort expended there all feels half-wasted until we understand more about the core feature set that'll go in.  I don't recall if I used the space in the barter screen for prices for something else, but it doesn't strike me as being a particuarly hard thing to fix mechanically if the space is there.

Will villains also organize prison breaks for agents they deem useful? Or for potentially useful blackmail victims too, I guess?

Also,

Will the prison sentence system be used for prisoners of war too, or do they get special rules?

They don't currently.  It's in our menu of fun-time activities, but we haven't done it.  May get another look once the dwarves start locking people up, or momentarily when we get to additional w.g. prisoners in e.g. the new tower dungeons.

Prisoners of war are on the indefinite detention rules, as they don't have charges for them.  At some point we could involve them in prisoner exchanges or ransoms or executions or anything that will start happening for other prisoners, but I've just left it for now.

How do you imagine the upcoming divine law to interact with civ ethics? Do you think it will override civ ethics, modified by civ ethics, or will civ ethics themselves be modified by divine law? Similarly, will Divine law only be what gods communicate to their followers, or will it also include laws from very practical knowledge like 'going into the forest at night will kill you'+'killing yourself is bad'='don't go into the forest at night, we'll imprison your instead'? Or will that be more of a later development?

Some religious prohibitions tie in to practical advice, even if they aren't stated directly that way or if they don't provide their reasoning; simply due to the computerized nature of this project, we'll likely have a combination of too-practical and too-random laws to deal with, and it'll take some work to make them feel divine.  There's a change to how the carts and horses and barn doors and so forth are arranged that'll come to the myth release, with the mythical events coming prior to the creation of civilizations most times, so the way that civ ethics come about and so forth will feel more guided.  The raw files will still guide what you end up with, but as with questions like "why do dwarves age and die?", we'll also have to at least try to answer questions like "why do dwarves consider these actions crimes and punish them the way they do?"  It won't be possible to approach every question with the first myth/magic release, simply because there are so many variables in the raws, but we'll make some progress. 

As for the source of divine law, I suppose that depends on what you mean by divine, and whether we back up the legitimacy of the declarations of organized religions with actual divine intervention or have a situation where the deity could actually call them out after a period of being adrift.  In the latter case, you might have practical laws or laws which are simply made for the benefit of the priesthood and their allies, depending on how much we get into the law codes and their reasoning and changes as we go.

Will dwarven tunnels get attached aqueducts/cisterns/waterwells at some point?

Will waterwells become usable in adventure mode, and will drawing water from them be affected by entity ethics such as trespassing and theft?

With exile implemented, will entities with ETHIC:FOO:PUNISH_EXILE be more likely to exile their members instead of beating or imprisoning, and will exiled members be counted as entity members or neutrals for the purposes of ETHIC:KILL_NEUTRAL?

Will entities gain master persuaders as law enforcers and use them to convert criminals if ETHIC:FOO:PUNISH_REPRIMAND is enabled?

Adventure role: Thief on the development page describes several punishments acceptable to an entity with ETHIC:TORTURE_AS_EXAMPLE:ACCEPTABLE and adjacent; will entities with a low opinion of torture favor social punishments, imprisonment or exile over these?

Is a system for generating personal ethics based on character personality in the works?

Will scholar research topics unlock buildings, reactions and professions, and will the entity list of same define an entities starting knowledge instead of restricting it?

therahedwig: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7927101#msg7927101
Flying Teasets (op): http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7927104#msg7927104
therahedwig: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7927107#msg7927107
FantasticDorf: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7927197#msg7927197

The wells and tunnels questions were handled in the replies.

Yeah, exile as a punishment for a given item in the ethics list should mean exile, rather than other options.  I have no idea about the reprimand though, ha ha.  It seems like it needs some sort of honor/rep addition where a reprimand has some actual impact on the offender's life.

I don't think I'll get to a more involved ethics generator since that's all on the chopping block for the law/customs stuff.  Once we get special laws etc. changing through various processes, the procedural and personal nature of it should arise naturally.

Knowledge should be related to game mechanics, yeah.  We just haven't gotten there at all yet.  Starting knowledge is complicated by the myth/magic stuff.  If one sets starting knowledge in the raws, then just like death etc., the legends should have to explain how they got it.  If one lets it float, then the civilizations will just start with whatever is explained by the myths and other pre-history.

I'm wondering about the whole "dynamic world" ideas that have been brought up with respect to myths and magic. I got the impression that sphere regions will be dynamic, changing as the magical world is altered (rituals with gods, using artifacts, etc), but I'm wondering if these dynamic changes to biomes might pave the way for less magical, more natural biome alterations. Will natural events cause changes to biomes, or only magic? If we're able to pull the world closer to the fire plane or whatever, melting the poles and creating more fire sphere regions, then might we also see more mundane changes to the natural world? Like, volcanic eruptions creating larger landmasses over the oceans, climate change due to non-magical factors, cold fronts causing temporary changes to biome temperatures and what animals spawn there, disturbance and forest succession, that kind of thing? If none of that is planned for magic, will the dynamism of magical biomes create a framework that at least makes variability in the natural world easier to implement down the line if you want to?

Yeah, absolutely.  Natural disasters will likely be one of the early tests we end up doing.  Forest fires have become a source of inspiration of sorts every August around here, and I've been to Mt. St. Helens a few times, as the natural world reclaims the ashen hellscape of sludge and toppled trees; right before we moved to California when I was a small small child in 1980 (and so I don't remember, but Zach does), our house in southern Washington was covered with ash by the big eruption (you could see the mountain from there.)  These sorts of things are often on our minds.

I guess you won't know yet as it's kind of edge-case, but...
If a spy (either Adventurer or histfig) takes on the identity of a curse-giving god worshipper, would they get cursed by the god after knocking down its statues (Ha! Fooled you. Now I'm a weresloth...) or just cause religious unrest?

Can villains falsely accuse other people of temple desecration if there were no witnesses?

Relatedly, will anyone at all care about temple desecration in the coming update? Can priests or worshippers of a religion come to hate someone who desecrates their temple? Like spit on/refuse to talk to them or become aggressive? Right now nobody cares how many statues you knock over, and it is kinda weird.

Ha, it would be amusing if the god fell for your secret identity.  In the future we'll have more of an idea of exactly how omniscient gods are etc.  I mean, gods being fooled is a normal thing, but here it seems more off, though punishment would certainly be warranted.

I haven't done anything new with false accusation so far.  There'll be a little of that as I get to false imprisonment shortly, but mainly it has been a fort mode thing to this point and we aren't there yet.

Temple desecration rep/witnesses/noticing:  It's one of those things that now built up sufficient pressure and related mechanics to matter more.  I haven't touched it yet (since I haven't gotten out of world generation.)  I'm not sure if it will change, but it's more necessary now than it was before.

This is completely unrelated to anything in the near future, but a quick question about village/city layouts. Right now villages and cities are organized in neat squares, like a 1930s Soviet apartment block. Obviously, medieval cities (and villages especially) tended to have much more chaotic layouts, with buildings frequently having odd angles between them, streets curving and twisting, etc. I assume that the problems behind implementing such building generation are very similar to the problem with boats?(non-90 degree angles being difficult to simulate with the current graphical system)

In general, when the spatial mechanics behind boats are implemented, do you expect it to be as revolutionary as the addition of the Z-layer? I've just mentioned city layout, but I only now realize how different DF worlds would be in general if they weren't basically locked in a grid

Bumber: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7927883#msg7927883
PatrikLundell: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7927912#msg7927912
Hapchazzard (op): http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7928003#msg7928003
therahedwig: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7928023#msg7928023

I don't think that's an entirely fair characterization of my current city maps.  There's an underlying 48x48 tile structure and buildings are aligned with the two axes due to map structure constraints, but zoomed out there are often hexagonal blocks and winding paths and triangles and other features.  It's not great, but it's not 100% blocky either.  I cannot do actual angled buildings due to the fact that I'm using tiles.  I mean, I can draw blocky angled lines, etc., but there are some non-trivial complications that come out of doing things that way as well, involving crossing the load lines.

But yes, it's related to boats.  We are not able to abandon the grid.  The interview in therahedwig's link covers a lot of the issues with boats/vehicles in particular.  You can't just angle a boat on an underlying grid without causing a ton of significant problems.  I'm open to specific suggestions as usual over in the suggestions forum, but I don't think it's an easy problem.  The easiest solution for a new project would be to go full 3D or abandon the grid in 2D, and I can't do either of those things now; the planned map rewrite will be hard enough, and is the limit of the kind of changes I can make without dooming the game.

In the end though, I don't think these limits hurt DF significantly.  There are simply certain aesthetic and spatial boundaries we can't cross, and that was always going to be true for a variety of reasons.

Will we see mercenary companies specialize in other more niche/exotic roles when magic comes around things like band of spellcasters who prefer to fight mounted, a company of wizards/otherwise magically knowledgeable people who control/summon magical beings to be used as warbeasts that they may or may not directly lead in battle and whatnot?

When the subject of seizing position-holders as prisoners is addressed, do you intend to allow the captors to ransom the prisoners, or will they just be locked away for now?

Shonai_Dweller: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7928317#msg7928317

Shonai_Dweller covered the second question, and ransoming is on the table in terms of the accounts we've been using, though it's not guaranteed. 

For the first question, we have certain dev notes up there about how, for instance, religious groups might be associated to night creature hunting, and various of the wizard notes are group/entity related.  Mercenary companies, being new, weren't specifically contemplated against those notes at the time, but now that they are in the game, it's all on the table, especially as it relates to anything categorized as "battle magic", supernatural threats and religious links.

Will the Myth and Magic update add new structures into the game? And if so, what might they be?

PlumpHelmetMan: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7929194#msg7929194
Death Dragon: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7929344#msg7929344
therahedwig: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7929374#msg7929374

Ha, yes, there's some listed on the dev page and quite a bit of "he he he" might be involved.  And all of the stuff like giant slade spires being thrust up from the underworld which are currently in the game need to be systematized based on procedural world/planar layouts, and that'll lead to...  well, who knows?  Assuming the map rewrite, we should have some new abilities to build some cool localized stuff that counts as structures.

It's planned that, when you expel someone, the person will remember that negatively and if they have villainous tendencies, they might want to take revenge on you in some way, right?
Would there be a chance that the same could happen when you decline a visitor's petition request or do they currently not care about it either way when you decline those?

PatrikLundell: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7929461#msg7929461

Yeah, I should set that up -- I've made a note.  As PatrikLundell said, they have personality-based reactions to it already, and if it does upset them greatly, it should be able to be the basis of a vendetta if they have the proper tendencies.

In what ways do spheres impact the appearance of angels at the moment, it impacts what their divine metal looks like, what there little modifiers are (it has a rasping voice or whatever) , but does it actually impact their appearance and if so , in what ways? Are gods with more disturbing spheres creating more disturbing looking angels (Do they create more insecty or spidery ones? Or whatever you feel is disturbing/would disturb people), are gods with more noble spheres creating more noble looking angels (Eg having the angle have a lions head/look like a lion (as lions have always been a symbol for nobility)), Do they impact the materials they are made of? etc.

I didn't have a lot to work with without magical backing, so maybe there are no additional effects than the ones you listed, let me go check...  war/valor/fortresses spheres adds tags for natural combat skills for the "humanoid warrior" angel class being 10 instead of 6.  The sphere effects on body materials work the same way they do for demons etc., so a muck god will more likely have mud angels, a rainbow god will more likely have crystal angels, etc. etc. (there are about 30 spheres with material links.)  Death, misery, darkness and night sphere angels can have dark color alterations.  You already mentioned the little descriptive modifiers (which have no effect currently.)  There are no animal linkages at this point, as the animals (like lions) don't have sphere links and my thinking to this point has been to have procedural culture take the lead on that.  It might be that large predators get nobility links oftentimes, but if there's a myth involving a lion that goes some other way, any corresponding angels etc. should work a different way.  Certainly there should be more done, and hopefully the myth/magic release will put us there.

Now that marriage and dating has been expanded, will we see an entity level value for things like adultery?
EDIT: Also: Since it's a common trope, are Gods creating demigods by breeding with civilized races planned?

Grand Sage: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7929529#msg7929529
Random_Dragon: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7929565#msg7929565

I have not yet added the ethics/values etc. related to adultery or what marriage even means etc. etc. in civs.  This'll likely wait for the status/etc. release after magic, since this sort of thing can be variously complicated.  Right now, people just operate on individual jealousy as it regards a partner's lovers, and they take extra lovers if their personality sends them that way.

Yeah, demigods are planned as a result of the myth/magic stuff, and we'd had plans at times over the years to sneak something in early which never went through.  It's hard to say what'll come through in the first pass in the magic releases as usual.

I know that torture, even if it makes in as a feature, won't be playable in fort mode because dwarves don't torture, because of their ethics but:

1-Will we get to do it in some way in adventure mode? maybe if you play as a villain, it'd make sense as an intimidation/blackmail thing
2-I've been a great fan of LCS for many years, do you envision the way DF is gonna handle torture as a job , in a similar way to how it was treated in LCS? Does it give you ideas on how to procede with that?

FantasticDorf: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7929884#msg7929884
therahedwig: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7929983#msg7929983
PlumpHelmetMan: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7929987#msg7929987
therahedwig: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7930001#msg7930001
Untrustedlife: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7930060#msg7930060

We're not jumping into torture in the near-term here, even with the villain stuff.  I'm not sure how it'll play out after that.  LCS isn't exactly a roadmap for anything, given how it was.  As therahedwig stated, the systems are interesting enough that what counts as torture is a line we've already crossed, especially when we had, say, weapon twisting in wounds.  The interrogations coming up aren't related to torture -- effective interrogation and torture are different things, as I understand it.

Concerning embezzlement, will this be something the player can take advantage of in any mode aside from legends? Or, in other terms, can the player be in positions where embezzlement is a meaningful act, as opposed to theft or reappropriating siezed wealth? (lords/kings/barons exerting taxes or property siezure)

In the event a player can theoretically commit embezzlement, will performing the act be an explicit manuever that provides one with context of the material ownership, or implicit based on appropriated wares and claims placed on that capital?

Do you plan to implement any jurisdictional forces/association/positions/etc who's task will be to assess ongoing losses and encourage investigations? Or does the bookkeeper largely fill this role in terms of speculative fleshing out of this feature?

I know we won't be able to tap directly into accounts ourselves, but will we be able to set an official to embezzling for us and receive things like bags of gems or local coinage as a representation?

As a player villain, you should be able to force/entice embezzlement and receive money up the chain, yeah.  What that meeeeeans now is still up in the air.  The economy is less defined after world gen that it is in world gen currently, so if we just end up generating pouches of coins or exemplar items for your lieutenants to bring you (as with tribute), that may be how it has to be.  It'll be best not to dwell on it too long, as the work will mostly go to waste later on, but it would be nice to give that form of villainy some tangible benefit.

Player embezzlement is even trickier and might not happen, since we don't have position responsibilities defined in any meaningful way linked to objects in the universe.

The w.g. counterintel stuff to happen and the fort counterintel and the player investigations are going to come into this; currently embezzlement in w.g. is stopped by the sheriff/captain/etc, but that's about to become slightly more involved.  For dwarf mode, yeah, we might toy around with how the stocks/bookkeeper stuff works when you are trying to figure out what's going on.  As with vampires, tormenting the player is important, without spoiling the game, and there should be fun side effects, in all versions of the word fun.

What does your workflow look like? How does a feature make it into DF from beginning to end?

There's no one way it happens.  There are layers of notes, and stuff percolates upward, but a lot of times some necessity or lark will arise and a feature will suddenly be in the game in some form or another.  Once a feature is on the plate to be added, related features can also make it in, just because it's a good opportunity.

The notes include planning sessions Zach and I have which can form the basis for the structure of a set of releases, and also the suggestions forum notes and features that might arise out of the bug tracker due to fixes (for instance, combat AI for removal of helmets, or the bending of joints, came more from bugs and/or major problems with combat/armor/materials.)

For a single feature, it might require a great deal of pen-and-paper drawing and planning and days or weeks of work (see village maps, etc.), or it might be an hour or two of tinkering.  Then that defines a whole new set of features that are possible, and the notes need to be updated etc.  There's also a good deal of future-proofing that goes on in the implementation, mostly in the form of pondering what's most likely to happen and building versatile data structures around that.

[Toady One]

So, just how worked up can religious people get? Are we going to see escalation up to the point of crusades against an opposing religion's holy city?

That's a little more organized than it will get by release, though after some persecution and preaching and rioting the direction of action can sometimes feel like an organized event.  Persecuted plotters can also enact plots directed at the targets of their persecution grudges.  But we still lack certain important elements, as you suggest.  The addition of the religious elements generally has broadly increased the 'surface area' of features that should be added and it will feel a bit like they are missing.

Are villains able to use chaotic situations like riots and insurrections as a distraction while they act out their plans(stealing/assassinating/marching the army into town)?

Riots are currently events rather than ongoing situations, so it isn't able to insert other actions inside of them.  There are quite a few of the elements of plots that I've been considering extending temporally, but it probably won't happen this time.  The old insurrections do take place over time, but I haven't linked that fact into villainy.  Overall, it needs to be homogenized and extended a bit, and it should open up some opportunities as you suggest when that happens.

What exactly caused the persecution of the Occult Coven by Stodir? Did he actually hate that religious group in some way or was it just greed plus some random chance?

Can other entity types also become persecuted in ways like this? Corporations, monastic orders, etc? Is it strictly for religious groups for now or could some greedy ruler confiscate the possesions of a corporation, for example?

Some other things I was wondering about these new non-civ entities:
Are entities like corporations, religions, mercenary companies always linked to a parent civilisation or are they separate? When a mercenary company purchases equipment, do they get it from their parent civilisation? So, would a dwarven merc company have access to steel equipment, while a human one does not?

Stodir also had an opposing religion that he held fervently.  But he didn't have a specific grievance against them -- it all has to start somewhere, and Stodir was that.  The greed temptation also builds up over time and has a few other personality facets which temper it; there's still a random element but I've been trying to get away from pure coin flips for this stuff to make it more interesting and consistent.

I haven't currently implemented other persecutions, though certainly non-religious ones should be on the table, e.g. involving stuff like factors/warehouses from foreign cultures etc., as there are plenty of historical examples of that.

Parent linkage: It depends on the case.  We found it convenient to delink mercenary companies, as I recall, while they still copy over a bunch of stuff from their parent first (which should, for instance, do steel as you expect.)  But the real story here is that the subgroups/property/customs/etc. release framework and maybe even the economy is needed to understand these linkages better, and I'm just hacking it together for the time being.

Will we be able to see and visit ruins of a destroyed temple ?
Will we be able to "ask" something like "what is this destroyed building" ? to people ?
Will we be able, as an adventurer, to witness riots ? And will we be able to take part on it without messing with loyalty system ? (attackings citizens based on religious differences without turning the whole city against us)

Death Dragon: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7930815#msg7930815
therahedwig: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7930827#msg7930827

Riots as w.g. events right now have an undecided future in adventure mode.  We'll have to see how much you can be involved in that locally, and there are issues in terms of how people are identified based on religion etc. that would need to be tackled in local play.  We haven't ruled out tackling all of these problems in turn, but the religious stuff still remains tangential to the actual villainous push for this specific release.

The links above address the first question...  I don't recall if you can ask people about ruined buildings when you are standing in them the same way you can with intact buildings.

Will religious riots like this be on the table for fort mode play, say if i make a temple for a human bard troupes most favored deity?
Why dont bard troupes have a patron deity? Thats totally a thing irl, for example in greek traditional theatre it was all dedicated to that one god...

therahedwig: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7930933#msg7930933

All of the w.g. religious stuff is on the table for fort mode, but we can't do it all, so we'll need to see what the most natural, easy and necessary bits are as we do the core villainous changes there.

The ability to have religious links in entities is new, and I added it with the mercenary companies; having not gone back to revisit performance troupes (or scholars, or anything else) is just the typical DF thing of having a zillion implications from every new addition.

I have some questions about one-way portals:
1. What kinds of creatures might they bring into the world? Will they be relatively normal, or completely alien?
2. Will megabeasts come out of the portals?
3. Will the portals bring items into the world? And if so, what kind?
4. What realms are these portals connected to? Are they afterlifes, or different dimensions entirely?
5. Will the player be able to open them in Fortress mode?
6. How will these portals affect magic and creation myths?

PatrikLundell: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7931801#msg7931801
Untrustedlife: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7931812#msg7931812

The links address everything, I think.  Thanks!

1. Is it planned to reword or remove the "You are a killer" bit when you ask people about your reputation in adventure mode? Being a legendary hero, or legendary hunter, or murderer, already implies you killed something, so why do the NPC's need to tell you "you are a legendary hero you killed x, you are also a killer you killed x", i've been playing adventure mode for years, and i've noticed that people who are new to adventure mode tend to misunderstand what that means , they think the NPC is being accusatory or some such when they say "you are a killer" (since people tend to think that is synonymous with "You are a murderer" when in the game that is not the case) but to the game this literally just means "you are capable of killing things". Why not drop that part, or reword it to something less jarring/redundant? Is there a technical hurdle? Or do you think its fine? Or do you plan to change it?

2. Any plans to flesh out the reputation system (or add new types of reputations, or display NPC reputations (other then enemy) in legends mode.) in general in the next few updates, such as displaying player reputation info in the Quest log?

And a more fun question:
3. Given how many patrons/donators you have now, how do you handle the logistics of drawing all those crayon drawings and writing all those stories? Is this writing basically a full time job for Zach at this point? The story bits you guys send out are all very well made, so he must put alot of thought into each And writing what could easily be hundreds of stories at a time must be quite the challenge.

Shonai_Dweller: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7931982#msg7931982
Death Dragon: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7932323#msg7932323
Untrustedlife (op): http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7932442#msg7932442
Death Dragon: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7932712#msg7932712

1. I'm up for rewording it, but I think the reputation type has a place in the game.  It's a specific and rare thing, killing people, and it has its own meaning.  It's not about capability of "killing things", but more about the act of taking a life, which, though it might be justified, is a non-trivial matter and might change how people view you (hence, a reputation), not that this has yet jelled in any significant way in the game.  But I think there are important distinctions to be made here, on top of murderer/hunter/hero reps (and a hero rep in particular won't always be purely death related.)

2. There are complications here, since reputations are dynamically calculated based on who you are asking, and you don't always deserve to know what they think.  We've considered showing something like "what you think people of your own group should think of you" in the quest log, yeah.  I'm not sure when that'll happen if we do it.

3. Zach does spend a lot of time on it, which is one of the reasons why official Threetoe stories up on the website itself are still fairly rare.  I don't spend as much time on it as he does, but I handle the email and bookkeeping for it, which usual takes a full day or two out of the month.  We're happy to do it, and it hasn't become as overwhelming as it might have.  If the situation changes, we might need to adjust, but it hasn't come up yet.

1. If a player is of a religion that is currently being persecuted would that show in play with them being harassed by their persecutors?
2. Seeing as mercenary companies can be religious might some of them set goals such as killing non believers or driving them out?
3. Would defacing an opposing religions temples be a possible quest priests might give the player in this coming update?
4. If the player adopts a disguise that specifies another deity as their object of worship might they be able to fool the established religion so they can avoid persecution?

1. World gen persecution events are currently one-off historical events, and I haven't even gotten to adv mode yet.  So no, currently.  This is the sort of thing that's likely to be expanded as we go.
2. That's the sort of thing that is on the table for the future as we continue working on these systems, yeah.  Right now, they don't.
3. This doesn't seem likely currently, as a general principle, though if we do get to the part where an adventurer can be a subordinate in a villainous network, then it's slightly more likely depending on how much religious stuff we get to generally post w.g.
4. We haven't currently established how the persecution identifies followers in the first place, so we'd need that understanding first before we know how it'll interact with identities.  Presumably, an identity that relates to another religion would be able to fool people as well as the identity fools them generally.

Will rock salt ever become an edible item?

Bumber: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7933281#msg7933281
Random_Dragon: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7933335#msg7933335

This has been on the table with, say, food preservation before, and recipes and all that.  So there are few angles and we'll get there when that stuff comes back into view, whenever that might be.

Are only towers capable of being restructured, or also houses? Like, will we see opulent villas as well as opulent towers?

I haven't done it yet, but I certainly sat there thinking about it.  When I get to the adventure mode maps I might revisit if things are working smoothly.  I was also thinking about how it relates to villas in smaller villages away from the cities, which I haven't done yet either.  I'm not sure how that'll relate to the local hearth stuff.

What are the plans for knowledge?

Do you have something more specific in mind?  There's a lot of knowledge already in the game, other sorts of things that aren't, and pieces of it that aren't linked to others.  For instance, all the knowledge in the library/scholar section of the game is separate from skills and buildings and jobs and items, and we'd like to change that at some point.  Then there's the whole matter of rumors and witness reports and reputation.

1.Will player adventurers be able to buy houses/towers/upgrade them after like the world gen folks can as of the recent dev log?
2.Even if not  how will those places and their upgrades carry into play, will the villains tower actually have all the upgrades they bought, will you give them proper maps, will a tower that bought a wall/fortification/dungeon/other upgrade of some kind actually have them for players to deal with (the villain has a tower with a wall so you have to climb the wall to get in the tower, for example)?
3. If they have maps, how much variation will there be so each tower has its own feel?

Is this a preclude to all your ideas for adventurer thievery one of those goals as stated in the dev page:
"Mansions/villas out of the way as well" for them to steal from
And for the merchant role as stated in the dev page:
"Renting/buying cottages and other properties"

Because if so thats amazing. Take all the time you need because whats coming is exciting.

Would be pretty neat to buy my own villa or tower...

1. It's certainly closer than it was before and would fit with the idea of letting the player perform each of the villainous acts.  As usual, if there's a big roadblock that springs up (related to property or the economy or who is in charge of selling stuff etc.) we might have to wait, but it's on the list currently.  The ability to upgrade rather than buy has some map trickiness to it that might cause additional issues (whether it's players or regular villains.)

2+3. Yes, the upgrades are definitely going to be incorporated into the maps.  I'm not sure what the level of variation will be, as that depends on the time spent plus how lucky I get with not having a bunch of map bugs to clean up (generating maps is always an uncertain process time-wise.)

Dev page vs. mansions:  Yeah, it's all pointed at those and other goals.  I needed the hideouts and it was like, well, there we go.

Why dont demons go on a rampage throughout the world once you release them or at least do more then just hang around your site? And why do mummies disappear when you leave the site, wouldnt it be much more simulations/interesting if they actually stuck around? It just seems odd given the other features in the game which are far more simulationist and kinda clashes with the reality of the situation.

Shonai_Dweller: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7933773#msg7933773
Urist McVoyager: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7934050#msg7934050
Egan_BW: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7934068#msg7934068
Robsoie: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7934093#msg7934093
Untrustedlife (op): http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7934163#msg7934163

Ha ha, yeah, this is one of those things that lingers in the air around almost every release, whether we mention it in the logs/notes or not.  We even had it in the notes for this time, and probably won't get to it.  I'm not sure what the inertia is; something about such forces being unstoppable, I think, since the underworld is an infinite source of such nightmares.  We can say the player brings it upon themselves, sure, but a demon incursion would still feel broken, game-wise, without some extra backing or countermeasures or self-regulation.  We'd need the myth/magic stuff to make such disasters more satisfying.  The sim just isn't up to a permanent infinite demon rift yet.

With mummies, though, I have no idea where they are going, heh.  They'd make a fine villainous addition, say.

For the Myth and Myth Release will magic also be found in the form of runes? In many different fantasy settings dwarfs have a great affinity for "rune magic", will we ever see this in Dwarf Fortress as well?

If so, would this form of magic somehow be implemented into the engraving and magic skills? (In the sense that creating a rune would require knowledge in the engraving skill in order to carve the rune into an object, as well as the proper experience in magic to imbue power into the rune.) Or would "Rune Crafting"  have it's own skill(s) entirely to differentiate itself?

Lastly, What uses could rune magic have?
(For example: Could magic runes carved onto a weapon/piece of armor give said item special properties such as a rune engraved weapon now causing fire damage or have it deal harder hits in general? Could a rune engraved on a Helmet grant it a better chance at shrugging off blows? As another example, could engraving a rune on an object like a door make it so that it can only be opened by one with sufficient magical knowledge/skill? Or could magical runes be used as a form of "trap" engraved on a tile that could cause a lethal property to activate, for instance say, engulf the tile in flames if a specific creature (ex: a goblin or filthy elf) stepped on it?)

I might be going out on a limb or a tangent here that could quite possibly belong in the suggestions thread, but if something like this was ever implemented it could add a whole new depth for dwarfs interacting with objects as well as their environment.

Shonai_Dweller: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7933810#msg7933810
Bad_Goblin (op): http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7933895#msg7933895

1)Will bandit groups (player or otherwise) be able to raid a shipment of embezzled goods from one site to another if they find out about the embezzlement, instead of either turning the villain in or blackmailing the person involved?

2)Can a group of bandits lie (since lying about identities is in) and say they're from a mercenary group in order to cause strife between two groups?

3)How likely is it embezzled goods will be encounterable in sites where it's being delivered in play?

4) Will players be able to show up to somebody's house with a horse strapped full of treasure like the Count of Monte Cristo and try to trade for their house before the big wait? If so will house owners take into account artifacts they don't know about in the cost? Will they take their furniture with them if you don't pay enough for it furnished or would that be too goofy?

5)Will villains stash their non-artifact abstract accounts in their houses in secret if their family doesn't know about how they got them?

6)Will villains that value family be more likely to tell someone they stole a cool artifact in their will? Will they be more likely to tell their family they have money or items without revealing its source if they don't trust them to bring them in on villainy?

7)Will more ostentatious villains dress their family and lackeys up fancier the way mercenary groups can equip others?

8)Will haunted furniture night creatures make it in before the big wait?

9) Will people on the street be talking about how "so and so really hit it off at the slots" even if we don't get gambling in play? Will people otherwise comment on unexpected windfalls, expansions being built on large buildings in town, or other signs of the ups and downs of local historical figure's fortunes?

1+3) Like tribute, there's a lack of tangible transfer right now post w.g.  We've only just taken baby steps there with some of the spoils stuff in dwarf mode, so I'd say it's not likely but at the same time, certain bits might be added to facilitate player and other villainy.  Remains to be seen.  Once we have anything moving around, suddenly a ton of things become possible, including third-party intervention.

2) As you suggest, this would be possible, but I haven't done it.

4) Ha ha ha, you know this is seeming slightly more likely than it would have a few month ago, which is a surprise to me.  There are some open questions about how house/tower/etc. trading is going to work in the release if you'll even be able to do it, but it's closer.  They wouldn't be able to move furniture or anything, since we don't have the infrastructure for that, and the whole notion of how upgrades work post w.g. is also up in the air, so I can't say anything about how that might work.

5+6) Basic heirloom designation has a family value check, yeah, and unlike personal treasures, these are can be passed on after death instead of lost in the house.  There isn't anything fancy about knowledge of artifact sources in general right now, so they can't be more specific either when storing or passing on an item about where it came from.  I haven't adding use of the trust variable here, though since this is all death stuff, I'm not sure if that should enter into it.

7) I haven't done this yet, but having rich people look rich is a very reasonable thing.

Untrustedlife: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7933815#msg7933815
Ha ha, yeah, I really ought to show some restraint, especially since that is such a supernatural feature anyway.

9) I'm assuming not, just because it hasn't formed a basic for shareable rumors (rather than a basic historical event) at this point.  It would be cool if people recognized stuff like that.  The only way I'd see it coming in for this time is if it related to player investigations in some way.

Are false plots a possibility? For instance, a king's agent instigating a false assassination plot against him to draw out and execute traitors.

They have many of the same problems as other lies.  Like secret identities, certain kinds of lies can be coded with a ton of effort, but I'm going to try to be careful not to add extra work (to the extent I can succeed in such a goal), so I probably won't go down such roads as I get into the counter-intelligence work, unless maybe it's an isolated event.

How can the player-adventurer pick out houses within a town that belonged to a historical figure? Will they be visibly different somehow, or do we ask around for properties? Random merchant houses in current towns all look the same inside and out.

Yeah, something is going to have to give during the villain investigation part of fort mode, related to some of the other location information we wanted to ask.  You'll certainly need to be able to find these houses.  Whether that works by physical appearance and/or directions relative to important structures, etc. is up in air, but we'll need to make it possible and perhaps even unannoying.

1. Can you list all the new types of buildings we will be seeing in large human sites in this next release?
2. Will special owned buildings be exclusive to massive sites like cities or can smaller sites like towns have them as well? I ask this because it takes a lot longer for cities to form than towns during world gen.
3. If our player adventurers can join mercenary organizations and said organization owns a building will our adventurer gain permission to sleep in that building?
4. Will buildings owned by organizations contain items related to the type of organization that owns the building? For example would a building owned by a mercenary order contain spare weapons and armor?

therahedwig: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7934257#msg7934257

1,2,3. therahedwig is correct on these, I think.  I can't think of a missing building, in any case, and a code check doesn't turn one up.

4. Whether the mercenaries in particular have good maps depends on the post w.g. coding, because they don't participate in the same general trade economy that the sites/civs have in world gen (since they are a subgroup, like a religion).  So this is still unclear.

Who do people actually give their money to when they buy real estate that didn't belong to anyone in a city? Does it go to the site government's coffers?

A while ago in this devlog (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/index.html#2018-12-07), you talked about how the infrastructure of a site can affect and change the population. Do you have an ability like this planned for libraries in the short term, too? For example, them being able to change the moral values of the site population based on what kind of books are stored in it?

therahedwig: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7934907#msg7934907
Untrustedlife: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7934930#msg7934930
PlumpHelmetMan: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7935081#msg7935081
Death Dragon (op): http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7935542#msg7935542
Shonai_Dweller: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7935564#msg7935564
GoblinCookie: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7935715#msg7935715
Shonai_Dweller: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7935792#msg7935792
Death Dragon (op): http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7935792#msg7935792

The sites and civs aren't limited in the same way individuals and smaller organizations are money-wise, since we just don't have the economic backing yet to make that satisfying (there is an unrelated fake debt system in place to handle w.g. trade, but that would be unwise to tinker with right now.)  So we just have the person's account amount get dumped into nowhere.

Libraries have an effect in world gen in the currently released version, based on the original and copied books that are there.  Every year, each library gets five turns to pick a book.  If the book has a poetic/music/dance form, it has a chance to make that form well-known in the entire parent civ, as a form of cultural diffusion.  If the book promotes a value at a certain level, it makes a roll against the author's skill roll when they made the book.  The local site civ can have their values shifted by 1-2 point (it takes 10 or more to change the visible text for the value), and the parent civ can also be shifted a point, and all sites under the parent civ have a chance to be shifted a point as well.  It's a very rough system (and it doesn't respond gracefully based on the number of books, etc. etc.), but there's something there.

So where did your inspiration for necromancers becoming obsessed with mortality before becoming necromancers, and the fact that they get it off a slab come from? "Now you will know why you fear the night" is a direct quote from conan the barbarian

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xn0td-xpl8w

, so i'm sure this has a place it comes from as well.

We were partially working from Faust and other stories, but the slab is, well, not really our own thing but more of a general commandments type situation?  There wasn't a specific pop inspiration.  Sometimes the systemic setup just necessitates pulling together a object here or there to fulfill a role.

Sorry for so many questions this time around, but i have alot this month, so heres what happened I killed a vampire who was a king(lawgiver), drank his blood, became a vampire, then assumed a false identity, then became a necromancer, and built a wooden tower with my zombies, as i was building the tower, human soldiers kept intruding on us who my zombies would attack and i would have to kill them, and they kept spitting at me and calling me a murderer for killing their king as my zombies ripped them apart, this was awesome, as it felt like i was a actual dungeon lord dealing with pesky heroes coming to my tower (and they still are, this is my current adventurer save ). I have asked on here before if adventurers would go to your camp and you said no, so why is this happening? Is it just hearth patrols sniffing me out? Or is this an intended feature? And if so will it be properly supported/will it be expanded upon in the future, eg full on sieges of my camp by large groups of soldiers. Instead of just soldiers "trickling in" i notice that most of them are also "recruits"

Ha ha, I really have no idea why they are coming.  I thought the "posse" thing was completely broken/unfinished last we looked at it.  In terms of towers and what you are to them, there's still a bit that needs to be done I think for them to understand that you are an enemy/antagonistic force to be reckoned with as an entity rather than an individual.  As I recall, the state of adventurer group diplomacy and the relation to the parent/other civs is still totally incomplete.  We'll see some action when we do adventurer villains, though that's more individual than group focused.  At the same time, when they hunt you as a villain, if you are known to be in a site with a pop, I mean, it seems like their use of armies to stop you will need to be on the table.  We still need to finish counterintel in world gen, and the squishing of villains there might clarify some things.

What's the Announcement going to be?
...
Too direct?

How about:
Hint please!

Oh, and,
Are you giving a talk at GDC this year?

Ha ha, there'll be more to say at the proper time!  I don't have any official responsibilities at GDC this year though I suspect it'll be busy enough.

With the map rewrite, were you also planning to make it easy for sites to dynamically resize? Like, for example, Dwarves digging down greedily, but also perhaps surface towns expanding.

I thought it might help a lot with situations where the player's fort map is slowing down because 250 cave horses are trying to path through the third cave, and I wasn't sure whether to expect that from the rewrite.

PatrikLundell: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7937076#msg7937076
therahedwig (op): http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7937090#msg7937090

Yeah, as you say in your second post, it'll give us way more control over the "loaded pillar" so that the third cave just isn't loaded until you get down there, if that's what you mean about the cave horses.  And there should be lots of other ramifications about how sites grow, overlap and are shaped generally.  That's always been one of the oddest things about adv mode especially -- as you walk around, it has the underworld and all three cave layers loaded, which is just weird and wasteful (but necessary the way things are now.)

[Dragonslayerelf]

Just a few questions
1) When will you be able to butcher sentient creatures after an ethics change and then use the gleaned bones/meat to make food/bone goods?
2) Can features that aren't planned to work for Dwarves specifically still be encoded, especially for modders and fiddlers?
3) Are there any plans for making cobaltite useful?
4) Are there plans for a thievery/stealth skill for stealth squads which you can use against your enemies to steal artifacts (like Kobolds & Goblins) as well as babystealing missions should you choose to go evil or modify your ethics to allow that?
5) Are there plans to fix the glitches related to fortress mode necromancers where the things they revive are still hostile to them?

[Shonai_Dweller]

Just a few questions
1) When will you be able to butcher sentient creatures after an ethics change and then use the gleaned bones/meat to make food/bone goods?
2) Can features that aren't planned to work for Dwarves specifically still be encoded, especially for modders and fiddlers?
3) Are there any plans for making cobaltite useful?
4) Are there plans for a thievery/stealth skill for stealth squads which you can use against your enemies to steal artifacts (like Kobolds & Goblins) as well as babystealing missions should you choose to go evil or modify your ethics to allow that?
5) Are there plans to fix the glitches related to fortress mode necromancers where the things they revive are still hostile to them?

Lime-green if these are questions for Toady

1) When any bug is fixed. Some time in the future - No fixed schedule.

2) All features are to be used with non-Dwarves. Post Mythgen, we'll get world's without dwarves at all to play with (besides, Adventurer is already non-Dwarves). You should probably ask something more specific here.

4) Current release. Send a squad, it uses stealthy skills to steal artifacts (and socks, and camels). (Babysnatching isn't in yet, but apparently it uses the same structures, so could be switched on easily enough).

5) Bugs are not features. They are actually unintentional. As a result, contrary to popular belief, there are plans to fix bugs. Because, they are bugs. No schedule obviously.

Edit
To clarify somewhat.
Bugs are generally looked at when that part of the game is being worked on. So, magic will feature a whole bunch of master-zombie relationship work which increases the chances of bugs being looked at then.

On the other hand, Toady sometimes just fixes bugs if he feels like it during the inter-development bug-fixing phases especially if they don't involve majorly rewriting everything.
But, best not to hold your breath for your particular pet bug to be addressed here. Bug tracker is hundreds of pages long...

[Tomsod]

Thank you for another big post, Toady!  I rarely play DF nowadays but I still read all the devlogs with relish.

A question about your general vision (not the short-time stuff):
Many stories and games (both video and PnP) implicitly involve some level of "dramatic convenience", e.g. a mayor's daughter gets kidnapped just as your party is visiting the town, or you stay at a tavern and just happen to overhear a villainous plan, or the protagonist randomly finds a magic McGuffin ring in a river.  What is your opinion on such things?  Would you include an option for the game to behave that way (to nudge/induce interesting events) if you could?  Is it even doable?  The kidnapped daughter example above, for instance, would involve rewriting the near past, as the game can't predict which town will you visit next, and the kidnapping has to happen in advance.
I'm asking because in real life epic adventures are rare, and I fear a realistic medieval simulation may be a tad boring.
I remember you mentioning an option to stop worldgen just as something big is about to occur, but it's not quite the same thing as it fits the player to the world, not the other way around.

Another question, on the myth generator:
As there are going to be various race-creation myths, is a good old Darwinesque natural selection on the table?  Either as a divine myth ("the mountain apes were our holy ancestors and diligent work made them into what we are now"), or as something scholars could discover (even contrary to preexisting myths)?  Or is it not medieval enough?

[George_Chickens]

Are there any features you once considered implementing, but now view as impossible to add due to time constraints?

Will there be a possibility for the player, as an adventurer, to join in on already existing plots?